


Within These Walls

by fredbassett



Category: Primeval
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-06
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 09:43:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 60,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1423864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ending up in Dartmoor prison for refusing to recant their belief in evolution is only the start of the problems facing Nick, Stephen and Connor. And Sir James Lester soon ends up with other challenges than just an over-crowded prison population.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The van doors were hauled open, letting a sudden shaft of light into the darkened interior. Nine men instinctively flinched away from the black-uniformed guard who appeared wearing full riot gear and carrying a submachine gun.

“Out!” The guard reinforced the command with a jerk of the gun barrel.

The men scrambled to obey him, moving awkwardly, shackled to each other, stumbling out of the back of the van, seeing daylight for the first time after an eight hour journey.

They were in a yard surrounded by high stone walls, topped with coils of razor wire. Double doors stood open on one side, leading into an equally forbidding building.

“Welcome to Dartmoor Prison, gentlemen,” sneered the guard.

* * * * *

Nick Cutter shuffled awkwardly down a corridor which smelled sharply of disinfectant. The man he was shackled to slipped on a wet patch of floor and went down hard on one knee with an audible crack, dragging down the person behind him in the human chain.

The guard swore violently and swung the butt of his gun at the man on the floor.

“He slipped, it wasn’t his fault!” Stephen Hart, ever the idealist, pulled the young man to his feet. “Connor, are you OK?”

Before his friend could answer, the irate guard lashed out with a gloved hand, catching Stephen a hard blow across one high cheekbone, splitting the skin like an over-ripe peach.

“Stephen!” Nick’s tone was urgent, loaded with entreaty.

His former assistant remained motionless as blood welled up in the cut on his face and started to drip down his cheek.

“Not such a pretty boy now,” sneered the guard, driving the barrel of his gun hard into Stephen’s stomach. “I’ll remember you, laddie.”

Stephen doubled over, gasping. His blue eyes still flashed defiance but, to Nick’s relief, he offered no resistance.

The guard contented himself with a hard kick at the young man who had precipitated the trouble, catching him behind his already injured knee. Connor bit back a cry of pain and only remained on his feet with the assistance of Nick and Stephen.

“What the hell’s going on here?” demanded a fresh voice. “Why’s that man bleeding?”

“He had a go at me, Captain,” said the guard. “I was just putting him in his place.”

The man the guard had addressed as captain stared at the line of shackled prisoners with searching grey eyes, his face expressionless.

Nick forced himself to remain calm, even though his hands were trembling with the urge to use his own fists on the sneering guard who had struck one of his friends and kicked another.

The grey-eyed captain met his gaze and gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Turning his attention back to the file of prisoners, he ordered, “Get these men checked in. The governor wants to start seeing them today, not next fucking week.”

“Yes, sir.” The guard snapped to attention. “Keep moving, you lot!”

The line of prisoners shuffled forward again, down the corridor and into a small room at the end. Two armed guards stood alert, one on either side of the door. A third man in the same uniform, but with a captain’s insignia on his shoulder, glanced up from behind a desk, dark hair swept immaculately back from a handsome, boyish face. He raised his eyebrows at the sight of the blood running down Stephen’s face and turned to his fellow captain.

“Trouble, Ryan?” The voice was precise and cultured.

“Jackson got enthusiastic on the subject of discipline,” the man called Ryan said dismissively.

The dark-haired captain sighed. “Gives the medics something to do, I suppose.”

“They’re not short of work around here.” The blond captain’s eyes flicked over to the two guards who had accompanied the human chain in from the van. “Jackson, Reeves, get this lot unshackled and get back out onto the moor. There’s a gang due for pick-up in Sector 5. Get ‘em back here and send them through the showers before mealtime.”

“Sir!” The two men saluted smartly and went to do the captain’s bidding.

Nick Cutter rubbed at his wrists. The metal cuffs had been tight enough to chafe.

The man behind the desk flipped a page over on a clipboard in front of him and beckoned to Nick. “Name?”

“Professor Nick Cutter.”

“Nicholas Cutter? You’ll find we don’t have much time for titles in here. Over there and strip off. You’ll be searched and issued with fresh clothing. Don’t resist, or you’ll regret it. Do I make myself understood?”

“Yes,” said Nick, his voice low, but firm, eyes not leaving the other man’s handsome face.

“Less tolerant men might consider staring to be out of order, Cutter.” A pair of piercing hazel eyes held his. “You’ll also find it’s customary to address me as ‘sir’.”

Truculence warred with discretion and for once the latter won. Nick Cutter dropped his gaze and moved to do the captain’s bidding. A month in the remand system had already taught him that there were some battles he couldn’t win, and some things that were simply not worth fighting over. He moved to one side, and started to unbutton the drab green overall.

Another man in the same black uniform gestured to a large laundry hamper. “Clothes in there, shoes in the box next to it.”

Nick followed the instruction to the letter. The man didn’t look particularly menacing, in fact the look in his brown eyes seemed almost sympathetic, but he was still a soldier, and that alone was enough to make anyone with any degree of self-preservation wary.

On the man’s orders, Nick bent his head forward and felt strong hands running through his hair. A pen-torch shone into each ear and then into his mouth. He was told to move his tongue from side to side and up and down while the light was directed into his mouth. The man nodded then turned away.

The snap of a rubber glove being pulled on warned Nick what to expect next.

“Turn around and face the wall, hands at chest height, lean forwards, legs spread.”

This wasn’t the first body-cavity search he’d had to endure in the British prison system, and it undoubtedly wouldn’t be the last. However, it was the first where the person conducting it had bothered to use lubricant to ease the passage of the fingers that probed at his anus.

Nick tensed against the intrusion, his stomach executing a perfect swallow-dive at the humiliation of being forced to stand there, unresisting, while another man pushed his index-finger inside him then followed it up with a second finger, probing and twisting. After what seemed a life-time, but was, in reality, less than a minute, the intrusive fingers were withdrawn. To Nick’s relief, the man hadn’t pulled the usual nasty prison trick of pressing against his prostate in an attempt to precipitate an involuntary erection.

“Nothing there that shouldn’t be,” the soldier commented. “Turn around.”

Nick obeyed, keeping his eyes fixed studiously on the opposite wall.

The man checked behind Nick’s balls and pulled his foreskin back, using his gloved left hand. Naturally, he found nothing. He gave Nick’s cock a series of quick squeezes along its length, checking for objects hidden inside his urethra. If he had been concealing anything there, the man would have found it, and Nick would now be in a lot of pain.

The soldier pulled his gloves off then nodded approval. “Get dressed.”

The next one to endure the same treatment was Nick’s former lab assistant, but first the man conducting the investigation donned a fresh pair of gloves and swabbed at Stephen’s cheek with an antiseptic wipe. He tut-tutted at what he saw then closed the wound with a series of butterfly-strips.

“If you’re lucky, it won’t scar,” he remarked. The same examination of head, ears and mouth was quickly conducted, followed by the instruction, “Turn around.”

Stephen did as he was told, somehow managing to retain his dignity, wrapped around him like an invisible cloak. Nick winced as the guard pulled on yet another pair of gloves, his sinking feeling only intensifying. Few guards were immune to Stephen Hart’s looks and long, lithe body. Nick had watched his friend comprehensively groped on all too many occasions and he didn’t expect this one to be any different.

The uniformed soldier who appeared to be doing the job of a medic, surprised Nick by keeping the internal examination strictly professional, with no inappropriate touches, other than those needed to do the job. Even the way he handled Stephen’s balls and cock lacked the normal lasciviousness which Nick had come to associate with those who usually carried out these searches.

Once the examination was finished Stephen moved to take the clothes handed to him by another guard. The same style of clothing that Nick was now wearing: a bright orange jumpsuit, a pair of grey boxer shorts, bright yellow trainers with elasticised tops and no socks.

The medic saw Nick’s look of surprise and answered it with a grin. “Mate, when you spend half the day with your fingers up another bloke’s arse, it takes more than a nice dick to get me excited.” The soldier sighed theatrically. “Next!”

Connor Temple shuffled forwards, clutching his old uniform like a comfort blanket. Nick tried – and failed - to drag his eyes away from the young man who was only in this bloody mess because of his association with Nick. Connor shivered under the medic’s dispassionate gaze.

“It’s not that bad, lad,” the medic said firmly but not unkindly. “Come on, you know the drill.”

Nick’s former student dropped his shoes in the box and parted reluctantly with his clothes. Another shiver wracked the young man from head to foot as he leaned against the wall, His body was pale, the only hint of colour behind his right knee, where a bruise from the other guard’s boot was already starting to show. The medic squirted slightly more lubricant than usual onto his fingers and put a hand on Connor’s shoulder to hold him in place.

Nick heard the hiss which escaped Connor’s lips as the first finger pressed inside him. The lad’s head fell forward, his greasy dark hair falling around his face. Afterwards, when he was turned around for the obligatory balls and cock check, Connor’s face flamed with embarrassment.

“OK, you can get dressed now,” the man told him. “Boss, do you want to take these three up to see Lester now? I’ll send the others along with Finn and Dane when I’ve finished.”

The blond-haired captain who had prevented further violence against Stephen in the corridor nodded. “Thanks, Ditz. He hates running behind schedule. Come on, you three. The governor likes to see all new inmates for one of his little chats. Just one word of warning, don’t get smart-mouthed. He doesn’t take kindly to any back-chat. And you address him as ‘sir’, as well. Got that?”

Captain Ryan turned and, without waiting to see if he was being followed, walked briskly out of the examination room.

Nick, Stephen and Connor trailed after him, following in the captain’s wake as if still bound in chains, which, to all intents and purposes, they were.


	2. Chapter 2

The soldier led the three men down various corridors in what appeared to be an administration wing of the prison. Another man, dressed slightly differently in a grey uniform, and carrying fewer weapons, had fallen into step behind them as they’d left the examination room. Not that Nick, or – he presumed – either of his companions, held out any hope of escape. They had been sentenced to five years hard labour in one of Britain’s maximum security prisons. Their best option was to keep their heads down and their noses clean, so to speak, but somehow Nick Cutter didn’t think life was going to be that simple. In his experience, it never was.

He glanced to one side and offered Connor a small smile and a light touch to one arm. The boy’s eyes were wide and frightened. He had none of Stephen’s defiance and was clearly in a state of shock. They’d been sentenced barely twelve hours ago and it still hadn’t really sunk in. The worst of it for Nick was that he blamed himself and himself alone, a fact that curdled in his guts like bad milk.

Captain Ryan stopped outside a door and rapped sharply on it.

A voice from inside replied, “Enter!”

The soldier opened the door and preceded them into the room, gesturing to the man at the rear of their small procession to remain outside. Nick, Stephen and Connor trooped after him and lined up in front of an imposing wooden desk. Nick knew, without needing to be told, that they were facing Sir James Lester, the newly-appointed governor of Dartmoor Prison.

The man looked them up and down, staring along the bridge of an aristocratic nose with an air of carefully cultivated disdain. Even the short length of time he’d been enmeshed in the prison system had been enough for Nick to have heard snippets about the man’s reputation. Lester was a hard-liner, knighted for services to the government. It had been at his insistence that the army had been deployed in an attempt to stamp out the wide-spread abuses of the system that had led to the recent riots.

Lester had previously been a high-flier in the Home Office, responsible for implementing tough polices against drug-dealers and drug-users, all of whom had swelled the ever-increasing prison population. He was also the man who had devised the concept of the floating prisons, now moored off various parts of the British coast, dubbed by the more left-wing press – or what remained of it – a return to the Victorian practice of prison hulks.

“Cutter, Hart and Temple, sir,” said Ryan. “The rest are still being processed.”

Sir James Lester nodded, staring hard at each man in turn, making Nick feel uncomfortably aware of the slight burn in his arse from the internal examination and the unpleasantly sticky feeling between his buttocks. He longed for a really hot shower, something he doubted he’d get again for at least five years. There was certainly no concept now of remission for good behaviour in the prison system.

“Ex-Professor Nicholas Cutter and his loyal minions.” Lester leaned back in his chair and steepled his long fingers under his chin. “What on earth made you think you could get away with it, Cutter? You’re not the first Creation Denier to come to trial, and you won’t be the last. Why on earth didn’t you simply do what others did and take early retirement? At least that way you wouldn’t have dragged these young men down with you.”

“The bloody country’s gone mad!” Nick knew it was futile, but he still couldn’t stop himself.

Lester smiled wolfishly. “I’m tempted to remark that that is your opinion and you’re entitled to voice it, but we all know that isn’t true, don’t we, Cutter? The teaching of so-called Evolutionary Theory was outlawed twelve months ago. Frankly, it’s nothing short of a miracle that you lasted so long.” He sighed and glanced at Stephen and Connor. “What a waste of promising young lives.”

Nick opened his mouth to respond, but thought better of it. He was concerned, not for himself, but for his companions. He had a nasty feeling that their sentences could easily be increased if this man cared to so direct.

It had been impressed on them by the trial judge that their release at the end of their sentences would be dependant on them showing remorse for their crimes and recanting their beliefs. Nick supposed they should be thankful that the current government hadn’t seen fit to bring back burning at the stake as a punishment for recusants such as himself who refused to conform to the beliefs of the Established Church. A church that now promulgated as a ‘fact’ the creation of the earth on the night preceding the 23rd October 4004 BC.

Lester met his eyes and smiled. “You’re lucky you came up before Bloody Mary on a good day, Cutter. She’s been known to hand out double that sentence for Evolutionists if she gets out of bed on the wrong side.”

Nick couldn’t hold back a grimace at the mention of Lady Mary Colquhoun, the first of the hard-line Creationists to be appointed to the judiciary. More had soon followed, and gradually the tide had turned in all walks of public life. Academics such as himself and Dawkins had found themselves increasingly marginalised and demonised. A self-confessed evolutionary scientist or atheist now had as much chance of gaining – or holding – high office as they had of flying to the moon. A moon that was also believed to be only just over 6,000 years old. He was simply surprised that he hadn’t been expected to teach his students that the bloody thing was made of green cheese, but he confidently expected that day would come.

“You’re thinking again, Cutter,” said Lester, in a quiet, dangerous voice. “It was thinking that got you into trouble in the first place, remember. Followed by your inability to keep your mouth shut, of course.” The governor’s voice was now flint-hard. “You three men have been sentenced to five years hard labour, with no remission. You will use that time to reflect on your crime and reach a new understanding of the world. You will attend remedial classes and when you leave here, you will be fit to rejoin civilized society. Or you will not leave here at all. Do you understand me?”

Lester’s eyes held each man’s gaze in turn, and Nick Cutter shivered at his words.

The idea of living and espousing a lie chilled him to the core. But so did the thought of a sentence without end. Five years he could cope with – or at least he hoped he could. What he didn’t yet know was whether he could buy his freedom at the price of denying everything he believed to be true.

The speculative look in Sir James Lester’s eyes told Nick he wasn’t the only one thinking that.


	3. Chapter 3

The door to the governor’s office closed behind them. The introductory talk, which had involved Sir James Lester talking and them listening, had lasted exactly ten minutes. The three men followed Captain Ryan down yet another white-walled corridor waiting on numerous occasions while the soldier used keys from a heavy bunch tucked into a pouch attached to his equipment belt to unlock the various metal doors that impeded progress through the prison. The grey-uniformed guard followed along behind, his footsteps sounding heavy on the vinyl floor.

Nick lost count after the third set of doors. He didn’t suppose it mattered, though. He couldn’t imagine they’d ever be allowed to wander around very much of the place on their own.

As they approached a set of double, open-barred doors leading into what sounded like one of the main prison wings, the soldier put up a hand to the ear-piece of his radio and said into a throat-microphone, “Stringer, repeat, please!”

As Ryan listened again to the message, Nick noticed the man’s hand drop instinctively to the butt of the automatic pistol holstered at his right thigh. His whole posture now radiated tension. Their small cavalcade came to a halt, and the guard who had been bringing up the rear started to look wary, gripping the handle of his taser even more tightly.

“Initiate full lockdown procedure,” ordered Ryan. “Meet me in Lester’s office immediately.” The captain’s grey eyes swept over Nick, Stephen and Connor, assessing the level of threat the three of them posed. His gaze came to rest on the guard. “Take these men to the Intake Wing.” He thrust a piece of paper into the man’s hand. “That’s the cell list. We’re going into lockdown. Get them and the other new arrivals secured immediately.” With that, the captain turned and headed rapidly back down the corridor as the sound of a klaxon horn started to blare loudly, echoing through the open space beyond the double-doors to an immediate chorus of jeers, whistles and cat-calls.

“Move!” The guard unlocked the door and gestured with the electroshock weapon in his hands. “If I have to use this, I will, and you won’t like it if I do!”

Stephen opened his mouth to reply, but a sharp nudge in the ribs from Connor brought him to his senses, much to Nick’s relief. The three of them were herded down a corridor by the clearly agitated guard, as all around them men were being driven in all directions by a combination of grey-uniformed guards and black-clad soldiers.

It became increasingly hard to keep up with their guard, as they found themselves jostled from all sides by other prisoners, all of whom seemed to know exactly where they were going, but none of whom were making any attempt to be cooperative. The men stopped just short of open defiance, but their surly looks said it all.

Connor started to fall behind, his dark eyes darting from side to side as they took on an all too familiar rabbit in the headlights look. Nick hesitated for a moment and then grabbed his arm. “Connor, keep moving!”

In front of them, Stephen stopped and turned around. Ignoring the glares of other prisoners, who started to flow around them like a river in spate, Stephen took two quick strides back to his companions and grabbed Connor’s other arm. Between them, they hurried to catch up with their assigned guard in the growing chaos.

The man had noticed that they’d fallen behind. “What did I tell you?” he hissed, brandishing the taser menacingly. “Get in front, where I can see you!”

Frog-marching Connor between them, Nick and Stephen hurried to comply with the instruction. Everywhere, prisoners were being driven into cells like sheep into pens and the crowds were starting to thin out. The loud clanging of heavy metal doors and the clicks of keys in locks signified that Captain Ryan’s instructions were being followed and that Dartmoor Prison was entering lockdown, although quite what that entailed, Nick really didn’t have a clue.

“Through that door, Cell 87,” ordered the guard, shoving Nick from behind and making him stumble and lose his hold on Connor.

The young man looked increasingly like he was out of his depth and drowning. A burly man in the same bright orange overalls lashed out with his fist, catching Connor on the side of his head and knocking him into the wall.

Stephen flung out an arm, and Connor grabbed his hand with a grateful look, letting himself be dragged along as he stumbled to regain his balance.

The three of them were pushed violently into the cell as all around them the sound of inmates rattling various objects against their own doors vied with the noise of the klaxon horn in a clamour so loud as to be almost paralysing.

Connor lost his footing again and ended up in an ungainly heap on the floor. Stephen swung around to face the door and aimed a kick at the metal, swearing under his breath. Nick grabbed the heavy frame of a bunk bed securely bolted to the wall, panting heavily, disorientated by the noise. The click of the lock sliding into place still managed to make itself heard and the reality of their situation hit Nick with the force of a sledgehammer in the stomach.

He closed his eyes as he swayed slightly, clutching at the metal frame of the bed for support. He’d never regarded himself as claustrophobic, but now he knew what the sensation felt like for the first time in his life. The cell was no more than three metres wide and four metres long. It contained four bunks, four metal lockers at the far end of the room under a narrow, barred window, too high to look out of, a stainless steel toilet in the corner behind the door and a stainless steel sink, fixed to the wall next to it.

Stephen reached down and hauled Connor to his feet. The young man was shaking from head to foot. It looked like the full force of their situation had just borne down on him as well. Connor saw the toilet in the corner and stumbled over to it, hands to his mouth. A moment later he was kneeling on the floor, head over the bowl, retching noisily.

An amused voice from one of the top bunks drawled, “Oh nice. Make sure he cleans up after himself.”

Nick turned to face their fellow cell-mate and found himself looking into a pair of green eyes set in a craggy, lived-in face topped with unruly sandy-coloured hair veering towards ginger.

Stephen shot the man a hard look and demanded, “Toilet paper?”

“In one of the lockers.” If anything, the man’s amusement only increased in the face of the younger man’s obvious antagonism. “Mine’s the top right. Touch it and I’ll break your fingers. We get one roll each per week. Make it last.”

Stephen fished out a roll of cheap, recycled off-white paper, pulled off a couple of sheets and handed them to Connor.

Nick’s ex-student retched again, bringing up nothing more than a yellow trail of slime. Breakfast had consisted of no more than a bowl of cereal, and that had been something like nine hours ago now.

Connor spat several times, wiped his mouth with the toilet paper and pushed the button set into the wall to operate the flush, discarding the paper at the same time. “Thanks,” he muttered, not meeting anyone’s eyes and the word was lost in the insistent racket all around them.

The man on the bunk stared down at the three of them, appraisingly. “Looks like you three know each other.”

Nick met his eyes, wondering if that was the right thing to do or not, and nodded. He had no idea what the correct etiquette for such circumstances was, and their time on remand had been too short to form much of a basis for knowledge, but he introduced himself and the other two men anyway.

The other man nodded, thoughtfully, then flashed a wide grin. “Quinn. Danny Quinn. My last cell-mates got moved onto G wing this morning. You’re in luck, though. They brought clean sheets and blankets around this morning.”

His words fell into a sudden silence, as the klaxon horn’s blare was abruptly cut off, and a moment later the clamour from the other inmates also ceased. An expectant hush descended on the prison and Nick found himself holding his breath, wondering what to expect next.

A second later, the lights went out, leaving them in partial darkness, with nothing more than a pale sliver of the fading daylight slanting in through the single window.

The man named Quinn sighed loudly. “Bastards. I hope you’ve eaten, because that means we’re going to miss a meal.”

A loud rumble from Connor’s stomach was all the answer he got.


	4. Chapter 4

Sir James Lester stopped pacing as soon as he heard the knock on his door. It started to open even before the command to enter had left his lips.

“What the hell is happening, Ryan?” he demanded before the captain had the chance to speak.

“I’ve ordered a full lockdown, sir.”

“Yes, I had noticed, Captain. The klaxon is something of a clue. The question is why? Have they had the temerity to riot again?”

Ryan shook his head. “There’s been a problem on the moor with one of the work groups.”

“What sort of problem?” said Lester, wondering if he was going to have to drag a report out of the man, sentence by sentence.

“I’m waiting for a full sit-rep, but it looks like one guard is dead and one missing.”

“What about the prisoners?” Lester was conscious of the fact that his voice had probably risen an octave or two, but right now he didn’t care.

“Five are still in custody, two are dead, three have vanished.”

A second knock sounded and another man entered the room. Captain Joel Stringer threw a quick salute and promptly got down to business. “We have no fucking clue what happened. I can’t get any sense out of anyone by radio, and I’ve ordered them to cease transmission and not use their phones either. We don’t want the press getting onto this sooner than necessary.” Stringer had managed to articulate Lester’s very thoughts in tones so sharp they could have been used to cut glass. “Lyle is on his way out there now.”

“You’ve obviously spoken to someone, what did they say?” Lester asked sharply, leaning on the desk for support as his mind whirled with possible scenarios.

“In Jackson’s words, sir, not mine, ‘It’s fucking carnage, there’s blood everywhere’. Then he was sick.”

Lester’s eyebrows shot up. “Then I suggest we get out there and see for ourselves, gentlemen.” He pressed a button on the intercom on his desk. “Lorraine, find Mr Leek and tell him I am leaving him in charge of the prison. I’m going outside with Captains Ryan and Stringer. Tell Leek to maintain full lockdown. He is authorised to sanction the use of maximum force should it be needed. Captains Wilder and Becker will remain at his disposal.”

Ryan nodded, and promptly started to relay orders by radio as the three men made their way down the corridor, heading to the Gatehouse as fast as possible. They passed various members of prison staff on their way, all of whom shied away from the two uniformed soldiers flanking Lester.

A black army Range Rover was waiting for them in the courtyard, and the massive entrance gates had already been opened.

“Sector 5, as fast as you can,” ordered Ryan to the driver.

The man took him literally, and the vehicle pulled away before Lester had even had time to finish fastening his seat-belt. Several road traffic violations later, they were hurtling down a deserted stretch of road, heading out across the moor.

God only knew what made the area so popular with tourists, Lester thought morosely as he stared around him. He thought the whole bloody area was dismal. A wilderness of scrubby grass, bog and heather, interspersed with stony outcrops known locally as tors. He’d been here three months and he hated the place already. It rained almost constantly, as far as he could tell, and now was no exception.

The Range Rover started to climb steadily and by the time they got their first sight of a cluster of vehicles by the roadside, grouped around a bright orange minibus, the rain had turned to sleet. Cursing the fact that he hadn’t remembered to pick up a waterproof before they’d left the prison, Lester followed the soldiers out onto a windswept stretch of moorland. As far as he could tell, a work-party from the prison had been spending their time clearing out ditches by the side of the road in an attempt to improve drainage. It was a job that could quite easily have been done by one man and a mechanical excavator, but that wouldn’t have served the twin needs of exercising the inmates, and demonstrating to the general public that the prisoners were actually paying their debt to society.

Red and white tape was already festooned across the road, and soldiers were stationed at either end of the cordon. One of the uniformed figures broke away from the main group next to the minibus and headed towards them. In the distance, Lester could hear the shrill wail of an ambulance siren.

Lieutenant Lyle the three men with a quick nod, his hazel eyes grim. “We have one man with his throat ripped out, Graham Day, one of the guards. Dan Bailey, the other guard, is missing.”

“What about the prisoners?” said Lester, before either of the other soldiers could speak.

“Four of them are fine, apart from shock. One is bleeding from a massive stomach wound and I’ll be surprised if he makes it, his guts were strewn half way across the road when I got here. Of the others, one has been ripped up so badly he’s unrecognisable, another one’s had his leg half torn off. He died from blood loss. Femoral artery severed. Two are missing, but one of them is almost certainly dead.”

“Why do you say that?” demanded Lester, feeling his stomach lurch at the lieutenant’s blunt descriptions.

“His arm’s over there,” said Lyle, his lips set in a thin, hard line, nodding towards the field on the other side of the ditch.

“What have you got out of the survivors?”

“Not much apart from vomit, piss and repeated use of the word ‘fuck’,” Lyle said. “I can’t say I blame them. It’s a fucking charnel house. None of them are in a fit state to be questioned.”

An ambulance came to a halt on the other side of the cordon, followed by two police cars. One of the soldiers waved the paramedics forward. A quiet flurry of activity followed, centred round the man still lying in the middle of the road. Lester watched with horrific fascination, unable to drag his eyes away from a slimy trail of what he presumed were the man’s entrails laying across the tarmac.

Moments later, the three men straightened up, one of them shaking their head. The soldier nodded, gestured at the minibus, then marched over, his normally good-natured face a stony mask.

Second Lieutenant David Owen, known to his fellow soldiers – for reasons that had never been made entirely clear to Lester – as Ditzy, said, without preamble, “He’s dead. It was an animal attack of some sort. Don’t ask me what type, I have no fucking idea. I’m a medic, not a fucking zoo keeper.”

“Are you saying the Beast of Bodmin was responsible, Lieutenant?” said Lester, with mounting incredulity.

The soldier looked at him wearily. “Well, that’s what the press are going to be saying, sir, but for all I know it could just as easily have been the Hound of the fucking Baskervilles. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to make sure the survivors are being cared for.” He glanced over at the three officers. “We’ll need people to accompany them to the hospital.”

Ryan nodded. “Do you want to take a closer look, Sir James?”

Lester could already feel bile rising in his throat, but against his better judgement, he nodded. He just hoped he could keep his lunch in its correct place. It was a close run thing, very close, but he managed it, to the obvious surprise of the soldiers. In fact he did better than one of the young policemen, who took one look at the mangled, blood-soaked bodies, and promptly turned away, retching.

“I’ve seen enough, Ryan,” Lester commented quietly. “This is a matter for the police now. We’ve contaminated their crime scene quite enough for one evening.”

The sleet was coming down thick and fast now, and it wouldn’t take much to turn it into snow. Anywhere else, sleet in mid-October would be considered unusual, but not here. His suit was soaked through and water was making its way in icy trails down the back of his neck but he’d be damned if he would show any discomfort. Men had died on this godforsaken stretch of road. That was worse than anything he had to endure, although he still rather suspected he might feel slightly differently after he’d spoken to the Home Secretary on the subject.

“The Chief Inspector is on his way,” said the older of the two policemen. “I’ve called for a full scene of crime unit. One of my men will accompany your people to the hospital, Sir James. We’ll need to start taking statements as soon as we can.” The man stared around him, helplessly. “Jesus H Christ, it’s like a fucking battlefield.”

“It’s not like any fucking battlefield I’ve ever seen,” commented Captain Stringer, before he addressed himself to Lester. “Ditzy’s right, sir, we need someone with experience of large animals.” He stared at the policeman. “Can you arrange it?”

“I’ll leave that decision to my boss, if you don’t mind,” the man said stiffly.

Stringer shrugged and walked over to the Range Rover, holding the door open for Lester. “Fucking plod,” he muttered, keeping his expression strictly neutral.

Lester allowed himself a tired smile. “I rather expect they’ll come round to your way of thinking, Captain, but in the meantime, I would be grateful if you would remain at the scene, with Captain Ryan. Please inform the Chief Inspector, when he arrives, that I will be awaiting his report to convey to the Home Secretary.”

The return journey to the prison was accomplished at a more sedate pace, but not by much. To his irritation, a mobile broadcasting unit had already taken up station outside the main gates, and he could see his Press Officer, Jenny Lewis, already doing her best, on the basis of no useful information at all, to find something to say.

As the vehicle drove through both outer gates and into the courtyard, Lester very much doubted that he, or anyone else for that matter, would get much sleep that night.


	5. Chapter 5

Nick lay down full length on the narrow bunk bed, still dressed, staring into the darkness.

Stephen had taken the vacant upper bunk, and they’d both bundled Connor onto the bed underneath him, feeling the lad shaking silently under their helping hands. The beds were equipped with sheets, a pillow and two scratchy blankets. Stephen had tugged Connor’s shoes off and arranged the blankets over him, tucking him in as best as he could in the dark.

“Try to get some sleep, lad,” Nick had murmured, knowing that it was unlikely, but still feeling the need to say something.

“No chance of that,” their cell-mate had commented, from his own bunk, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the darkness. “This lot haven’t had their supper. The noise will be starting again soon.”

He’d been right. The silence had only lasted a short time before a rhythmic sound of metal drumming on doors had started up.

“What the hell is that?” muttered Nick, the noise almost instantly grating on his nerves.

“Metal mugs. There’s one in your locker if you want to join in,” commented Quinn.

“I’ll pass, thanks,” Nick replied. “How long will it go on for?”

“All night, probably. Unless Lester loses his temper and sends the guards in to confiscate them.”

“Does he often lose his temper?” Suddenly it seemed important for Nick to discover more about the man who now controlled their lives.

“No. But he’s capable of putting on a show if he thinks it’s necessary.”

“What are you in for, Quinn?” Nick regretted the question as soon as it had passed his lips, knowing instantly that he had transgressed some unwritten rule.

“That’s for me to know and you to guess,” Quinn replied, sounding more amused than annoyed, much to Nick’s relief.

“Are we allowed to know how long you’ve been here?”

“Two months. I was transferred here after Albany went into meltdown. That’s why this place is so bloody over-crowded. In this wing there are now four people in cells designed for two. Everywhere else, they’ve crammed in extra bunks as well, so single cells have become doubles. It’s a fucking disgrace. No wonder this place is living on a knife edge.”

Nick had heard about the riots in Albany, but knew nothing of the details. Prisons hadn’t been high on his agenda of things to learn about at that point in his life, and he’d certainly never expected to see the inside of one.

“So you’re a sex offender,” commented Stephen, from the bunk opposite Quinn.

Nick sat bolt upright in the darkness, expecting trouble and wondering what the hell had got into his former lab assistant. Stephen wasn’t normally this confrontational, but then again, it could hardly be classed as a normal day.

The ever-present sound of metal rattling on metal continued to drum around them, almost drowning out Danny Quinn’s reply. “Worried about your virgin arse, pretty boy? Well, forget it, I’m no nonce.”

And to his surprise, Nick believed him, which is clearly more than could be said for Stephen.

“Even I know Albany’s reputation, Quinn.”

“You know fuck all, blue eyes. But I do know you’ll be taking it up the arse before the week’s out, and the screws will just stand and watch. And there are plenty around here who won’t object to sloppy seconds, either, so it won’t just be the once, no matter who gets to you first.”

Nick heard Stephen’s sharp intake of breath in the darkness and the creak of the springs in the bunk as his friend started to move.

“Stephen!” Nick knew his voice sounded pleading, but he didn’t care. “Leave it!

“Yeah, leave it,” yawned Quinn. “You’ll be scaring the lad, and he looks like he’s had enough for one day.”

Danny Quinn was right, and fortunately even Stephen recognised that. Nick waited with bated breath for further movement, but none came. Eventually, he exhaled a long, slow breath, then lay there in the darkness, listening to the noise from all around them in the cell block.

After what seemed like half the night, but was in reality probably no more than an hour, the sound of footsteps progressing around each landing started to be heard, together with raps on every door, and an instruction to be quiet. Nick heard the words, “Mr Leek’s in charge right now, and you know what that means,” being said repeatedly. It was clear that the words meant something to the other inmates, and gradually each cell fell silent.

The lack of noise somehow made the darkness seem even heavier, and Nick felt a sudden irrational desire to break the silence. “Who’s Leek?” he asked, surprising even himself with the question.

“Deputy guv’nor,” replied Quinn. “You don’t want to mess with him. Lester’s bad, but at least you know where you stand with him. Leek’s a sick little fucker. He was moved here from the Scrubs. Rumour has it they wanted the peace and quiet. He had the place in lockdown nearly every other day if someone so much as farted without permission.”

“What will he do if they don’t stop the banging?” Nick was finding that talking seemed to help quieten his nerves. He just hoped that Stephen didn’t get confrontational again. They were going to spend God alone knew how long each day locked up with this man. They couldn’t afford to antagonise him. Besides, he was their only source of information at the moment, and even Nick knew that they would need information in order to survive.

“Most likely send the guards in with orders to use their tasers. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of those, matey. Not unless you fancy peeing your pants and having the shakes for the next half hour.”

Nick found the matter of fact tone of Quinn’s voice more chilling than his actual words. It was patently obvious that that the man been on the receiving end of that sort of treatment often enough.

“Who’s in charge here, the guards or the military?”

“You ask too many questions, Cutter, has anyone ever told you that? Get some fucking sleep.”

The rumble of Connor’s stomach broke the ensuing silence again, followed by a muttered apology from the boy. Nick heard Danny Quinn curse and start to move around in the darkness. He tensed, expecting violence, but the next thing he heard was the thump of Quinn’s bare feet hitting the floor and then the sound of a locker door being opened. He heard Connor suck in his breath in fear, but the next noise was the tearing of a plastic wrapper.

“Eat this and shut up, kid. It’ll be all you get before morning, so make it bloody last.”

And with that, Quinn climbed back up onto his bunk, and the sound of silence fell heavily on the cell, punctuated by muffled chewing noises from Connor. Eventually, in a shaky whisper, the boy said, “Thanks, Mr Quinn.”

Danny Quinn snorted. “Save your ‘misters’ for the screws, kid. It’s Quinn, OK?”

“OK.” Connor’s voice was quiet, but less shaky now. The chocolate bar, or whatever it had been, had clearly helped.

Nick tried to ignore the grumbles from his own empty stomach and turned over, still fully dressed, pulling one of the blankets around his shoulders. All he could now hear were muffled orders being shouted on the various landings outside the cell, but eventually even they fell silent, and the only sounds in the cell were the noise of breathing and very quiet, almost inaudible sniffles from the other bottom bunk as Connor Temple cried himself to sleep, clearly believing that he was the only one still awake.

Then eventually even Connor drifted off into sleep, leaving Nick Cutter awake in the darkness of the cell.

It was a very long time until he finally got something resembling peace.


	6. Chapter 6

Stephen came awake abruptly as he always did. He lay on his back for a moment, staring up at a flaking, white-painted ceiling, fighting the sudden feeling of disorientation, which was followed by an equally sudden, sharp nausea as he remembered where he was, and why.

He rolled onto his side in the grey light of early morning, and found himself staring at the man in the other top bunk, a man who, the previous night, Stephen had accused of being a sex offender. Not exactly one of his brightest moves, even he had to admit that, but he’d been tired, hungry and fucking fed up. He’d spent the day locked up in the back of a prison transit vehicle, with no food, little water, and the smell of his fellow prisoners’ sweat assaulting his nostrils.

Then he’d been forced to strip, at gun point, before being subjected to a full body cavity search in a roomful of other men. Not exactly one of his better days.

The man named Danny Quinn started at him expressionlessly, clearly leaving the next move up to Stephen.

Swallowing his pride, Stephen Hart sat up, holding both hands up, palm outwards. “Truce? I’m sorry about what I said last night.”

Quinn held his gaze for longer than was comfortable then nodded slightly. “Truce.”

With a feeling of relief, Stephen swung down from the bunk, moving as lightly as he could to avoid waking Connor in the bunk below him. His bladder was full and demanded urgent emptying. With his back to his cellmate, Stephen stood over the stainless steel toilet bowl and let loose a long stream of urine, sighing quietly, not caring who was watching or listening at that point. He shook himself off, zipped his jumpsuit back up, washed his hands, dried them on cloth-covered legs and finally turned back to face Quinn.

“So what happens next?”

“I have a piss and you watch me?” Quinn’s eyes held amusement and Stephen found himself returning the man’s grin.

“After that?”

“If we’re lucky they let us out and feed us.”

“If we’re unlucky?”

“They’ll chuck us a couple of energy bars and we’ll kick our heels in here for the rest of the day. Depends on the reason for the lockdown.”

Stephen raised his eyebrows, questioningly.

Quinn shrugged. “I know no more than you do, sunshine. Could have been caused by trouble on another wing. Rumour has it a few hot-heads in D Wing have been playing silly fuckers, so maybe it was that. We’ll find out when they let us out of here and not before.”

“How long do they keep us locked up for?”

“Twenty-three hours a day, if they feel like it. You’ll be assigned to some sort of work pretty quickly, and they’ll let you out for work-gangs after that, but not until you’ve been assessed for escape risk. Until then, if you’re lucky, there’ll be an hour of free association a day, plus half an hour out for meals: breakfast, lunch and supper.”

Stephen stared around the cell, barely able to suppress a shudder. Twenty-one and a half hours - more if he was unlucky - every day, in a cell designed for two people, but now holding four. Jesus H Christ, he’d go mad within a week, he knew he would.

Quinn saw the look on his face and gave him a not-unkind grin. “You’ll survive. Most do. With your looks you’ll be able to buy quite a few favours. Better that way than someone taking what they want by force.”

Stephen’s stomach gave an unwelcome lurch and he dropped his eyes from Quinn’s. The guy wasn’t saying it to goad him, he was simply stating a fact. And that made it even worse. He took a deep breath and looked up. “Has that happened to you?”

Danny Quinn didn’t flinch, in fact his expression didn’t change at all as he said quietly, “Yeah. Happened in my first week in Albany. There were four of them in the showers. It hurt like hell and I needed stitches afterwards. Took me two weeks before I could take a crap without feeling like someone was sticking a red-hot poker up my arse. Worse thing was I blamed myself. Big strong guy like me, ex-copper, of course I should have fought ‘em off.” His voice trailed off for a moment, and his eyes took on an unfocussed look.

Stephen opened his mouth, but shut it again, not knowing what to say. He knew perfectly well that his looks would make him vulnerable. He’d had enough problems on remand, but here it would be different. Here it would be a hundred times worse and he knew he had no chance of leaving Dartmoor without being raped. He glanced down at Connor, and was relieved to see the young man was still asleep, curled into a tight ball with the blanket scrunched up under his chin.

“It’ll be the same for him, won’t it?” said Stephen heavily.

Quinn sighed and nodded. “He’s young enough to appeal to the real nonces, that’s his problem. At least a hundred of them were transferred over here from Albany, and there are still a few of them here on the Intake Wing. Best thing your friend can do is find someone who wants a bitch – preferably one of the soldiers, and hope they’ll protect him. Otherwise he’s stuffed. Literally.” Quinn’s eyes rested on Connor for a moment and he shook his head.

Stephen opened his mouth to ask another question, wanting to know how a former policeman had managed to end up in prison, but, mindful of the man’s words to Cutter the previous night on the subject of too many questions, he shut it again and simply climbed back onto his bunk.

“You’re a fast learner, Hart,” commented Quinn approvingly.

Stephen stretched out again on the hard mattress listening to the noises of the enormous prison gradually waking up around him. A while later he heard movement from the lower bunk beneath Quinn, which signified that Nick Cutter was in the process of waking up. He watched the Scotsman turn on his back and stretch, then Cutter abruptly stopped all movement for a moment as he remembered where he was. Eventually, like Stephen had been, he was driven from his bunk by the dictates of his bladder – and the need to perform other bodily functions.

Stephen turned over, pressing his face into the pillow. Christ, could this place get any more fucking humiliating? He stayed like that, motionless, while Cutter finished what he had to do, flushed the toilet, washed his hands and returned to his own bunk, without speaking.

Eventually, Connor followed suit, only this time, a few minutes later, a quiet voice muttered, “Er, guys, could someone bung me the loo roll?”

The three men lay motionless, until Quinn broke the silence with a bark of laughter. “Jesus, kid, you’ve got a lot to learn.” He leaned down, opened one of the lockers and chucked a roll over to Connor, saying, “Catch!”

Connor joined in the laughter, breaking the tension, leaving Stephen to contemplate the enigma that was Danny Quinn.


	7. Chapter 7

Ryan knew Lester was tense. The man hadn’t stopped pacing up and down since Ryan had entered the room. Ryan guessed the governor had already had his superiors in the Prison Service crawling all over him for news of what the hell had happened out on the moor. To top it all, the press were still camped outside the main gates, even though it was now the early hours of the morning.

Ryan had only arrived back at the prison five minutes ago, soaking wet and freezing cold, but he’d known better to stop off in the barracks wing for a change of clothes. When Lester wanted a report, he wanted it immediately. The foul conditions out on the moor would not have been accepted as a valid excuse for delay, even though the sleet had continued for most of the night, turning the majority of the crime scene into an even worse quagmire than usual. His fellow captain, Joel Stringer, had remained at the scene to act as liaison with the police.

Stringer’s upper class accent always came into its own in such circumstances and Ryan, as ranking military officer in the prison, had no qualms about making use of it. Stringer was also good with the press, effortlessly directing them to the increasingly harassed Jenny Lewis. The Public Relations Officer had spent the night camped out in the Gatehouse, fielding ever more hysterical queries about why the Beast of Bodmin had chosen to show up on Dartmoor.

“News?”

Ryan nodded. “The police found evidence of large animal tracks on the moor and they eventually followed up Owen’s suggestion of calling in an animal expert.” The captain allowed himself a grin. “I think they were a bit surprised by who turned up.”

Lester stopped for a moment and raised his eyebrows.

“He turned out to be a she. A little blonde girl who looked like a school kid. It turns out they called Wellington Zoo and she was the duty keeper.”

Ryan had been surprised by the obvious sexism shown by the local police when the girl had turned up, swamped by a set of bright yellow waterproofs. To everyone’s surprise, she hadn’t thrown up at the sight of the bodies. They’d been sceptical when she had confirmed it as an animal kill and their obvious dismissal of her views had shown. Right up until the moment that their crime scene investigators had started talking about the animal hairs they’d got off the severed arm, still lying out on the bog.

At that point, the members of the local constabulary had started taking Miss Abigail Maitland somewhat more seriously.

“Have we any reason to believe it was a breakout?”

Ryan met Lester’s eyes and shook his head. “If it was, it’s the weirdest one I’ve ever seen.”

“Captain, we have twp prisoners missing, frankly, I’ll believe it was an escape attempt until someone proves me wrong.”

“Neither of the men was assessed as an escape risk.”

“The assessments are not infallible, Ryan. The fact remains they’re missing, presumed absconded. The immediate question we need to address is do we keep this place in lockdown tomorrow?” He glanced at the clock on the wall and sighed. “Make that today.”

“We’ve enough tension with the overcrowding, sir. Lockdown will only make matters worse. There’s nothing to connect anyone on the inside with what happened out on the moor.”

“Mr Leek recommends full lockdown for another 12 hours.”

It was Ryan’s turn to sigh. “Sir, with respect, Mr Leek recommends full lockdown if a toilet gets blocked or a prisoner farts too loudly. The men are doubled up in their cells and they’ve had sod all exercise or free association since the riots. In my view, it’s asking for trouble to keep them in lockdown.”

Lester stopped pacing and turned to face Ryan, his expression bleak. It was the face of a man who’d gone a full night without sleep. And he wasn’t the only one. “I’ll take your advice on this occasion, Captain. Besides, if the prisoners do know anything, this will be a good opportunity to tap into the rumour mill. You’ll be briefing your men and the guards on exactly what has happened, I presume?”

Ryan nodded. He was knackered, as well as soaking wet, but he knew perfectly well that in common with Lester and several other members of staff, he’d end up doing yet another double shift.

A knock on the door sounded loud in the silence that had fallen, and before the word ‘enter’ was entirely out of the governor’s mouth, the door opened to admit Oliver Leek, the man who held the position of Deputy Governor. He was a young man who had risen very quickly in the Prison Service, after joining the Civil Service on the fast-tracked graduate entry programme, and Ryan didn’t trust him one iota. Leek’s views on crime and punishment made Lester’s look positively liberal.

Ryan was not enjoying his latest posting, although he was careful to keep his opinion to himself, and men like Leek only confirmed him in his view that there was a great deal wrong with the prison system. Locking up men like battery hens was a recipe for disaster. Overcrowding had been a major reason behind the recent trouble at Albany, and the fallout from that was only exacerbating an already tense situation in Dartmoor.

He watched Leek’s pale eyes settle on him without liking. The feeling was mutual, but the soldier was careful not to allow his own dislike to show.

“Get some dry clothes on, Ryan,” said Lester, dismissing him with a nod. “Oliver, does Ms Lewis have a press release ready?”

Leek smiled unctuously and was handing over a piece of paper as Ryan left the room. The man wouldn’t be pleased about the decision to discontinue the lockdown, the soldier was sure of that.

The shower block in the barracks wing was deserted and for once, the water was hot enough to sting. Ryan grabbed a bar of soap and used that on his hair instead of going on a hunt for shampoo. Steam rose around him and the heat started to drive the cold out of his body, although his feet still felt like blocks of ice.

Ryan rubbed the soap into his armpits, washing away the sweat of a long day then dropped his hands to run them over his cock and balls. As he touched himself, a sudden memory of a tall, slim body intruded into his thoughts. An unruly shock of dark hair had only served to make the man look like he’d just climbed out of a bed rather than the back of a prison van. Ryan’s cock twitched in his hand. The blue-eyed prisoner was too bloody good-looking for his own good, even though Ditzy had managed to make a joke of it. Looks like that wouldn’t make the guy’s life easy in any prison, but in this one, with the dregs of Albany in the mix, they would be a curse. There were even several guards who Ryan wouldn’t trust not to pass up any opportunity that might present itself.

His cock was fully hard now and Ryan quickened the movements of his hand. It was rare to get a private moment in prison, even for the men who carried the keys, and he couldn’t remember off-hand when he’d last had the opportunity for a quiet wank. He certainly wasn’t going to pass this one up, although he did keep a wary eye on the door.

The sensations started to heighten and Ryan had no intention of holding his climax back. One last hard stroke and he came, thrusting up into his hand as he tried – without success – to force the sight of a pair of vivid, challenging blue eyes out of his mind.


	8. Chapter 8

The sound of a key turning in the lock could be heard even over the noise coming from the other cells. On the top bunk, Stephen sat up and exchanged glances with Quinn. The ginger-haired ex-policeman shrugged and quickly turned his attention back to the door.

A black-uniformed soldier poked his head around the door and remarked, “Get your lazy arses out of bed if you want some breakfast. Lock up again in two hours, so make the best of it.”

Quinn grinned and swung his long legs over the side of his bunk and dropped lightly to the floor. Stephen followed his example, with Nick and Connor not far behind. By unspoken assent they stayed close to Quinn as he made his way through the throng of other prisoners all pouring out of their cells and streaming down the metal stairs to the ground floor.

Breakfast consisted of bacon, sausage, beans, scrambled eggs and fried bread. The food was shovelled away at speed and washed down with mugs of tea. It was the first decent meal Stephen had eaten since they’d been sentenced. Connor wiped his plate clean with a slice of bread and smiled happily, clearly unaware of the fact that he was attracting the attention of a group of men sat at the next table.

“Don’t make eye-contact,” Quinn muttered.

Connor shot him a concerned look but did as he’d been bidden. Much to Stephen’s relief after staring at Connor for a few moments the other men went back to their conversation and ignored him. 

As soon as Stephen and his cell-mates had finished their drinks and taken the empty plates, plastic cutlery and mugs back to the serving hatch, Quinn declared that they might as well take advantage of the free association time and get their bearings. He proved to be an amusing and informative companion and clearly knew his way around the place. The exercise yard was like something out of an old prisoner of war film shot in black and white, or in this case, shades of grey. High walls were topped by coils of razor wire and overlooked by an observation tower from which a guard could survey the whole area. 

Two armed men were on duty, accompanied by large German Shepherd dogs that would be able to easily take a man down. In his time in the remand centre, Stephen had seen a prisoner who had been stupid enough to make a run for it in the presence of one of the guard dogs. He had been overpowered in seconds and left with severe bites. After the incident, Stephen had heard the security guards saying that in a riot situation, if they had a choice of one dog or ten guards, they’d choose the dog any day, and after seeing the animal in action, he’d understood where they’d been coming from.

“Found some friends at last, Quinn?” one of the guards commented as they passed him.

Quinn’s wide mouth slid easily into a grin. “It’s nice to have some company, sir.” 

Stephen watched as Quinn glanced around the yard at several small groups of prisoners huddled together, all talking quietly. He wondered if the ex-copper had picked up on something as they’d been on their tour around the place. Stephen only had a limited experience of prisons, but even he had noticed the strange mix of excitement and apprehension in the air. Originally he’d put it down to the lifting of yesterday’s unexplained lockdown, but now he wasn’t so sure.

“Well, you make sure they behave themselves. We’ve got enough trouble around here as it is.” 

“What happened yesterday, sir?” Quinn enquired, with an air of carefully cultivated innocence.

“You tell me,” the guard muttered. “Leek’s got a face like a slapped arse and we’ve been told to come down like a ton of bricks if one of you lot so much as farts without special dispensation from the guv’nor.”

“Damn, knew I should have gone easy on the beans at breakfast,” Quinn said, his expression deadpan, belying the look of curiosity in his eyes. With a casual nod to the guard, Quinn moved off with Stephen and the others trailing after him like chicks after a mother hen. When they were out of earshot of anyone else, he said quietly, “He was on a fishing trip. Wanted to know if I knew anything – which I don’t – but he obviously thought it was worth a try. Can you three manage to stay out of mischief if I take a little wander around?”

“I imagine we can manage that,” Nick said sounding more confident than Stephen felt. 

There were times when Nick’s own particular brand of truculent optimism had unintentionally got them into trouble, but from what Stephen had seen so far of Dartmoor Prison, this was very definitely not the place to have a run in with anyone. The guards seemed edgy and the presence of the soldiers was clearly resented by both guards and prisoners alike, adding an additional layer of tension to the mix. They walked slowly around the exercise yard and, as grim as it was, Stephen was still glad to feel the breeze on his face and see the sky, even if it was as grey as the flagstones under his feet.

They negotiated one circuit of the yard without attracting any undue attention and by then a light drizzle had started to fall from leaden sky. By unspoken assent, they made their way back inside to one of the recreation rooms. The only available activity appeared to be table tennis, and the two tables were already in use by others, so they made their way over to some empty chairs and settled down in silence. If this was all they had to look forward to for the next five years, Stephen was certain he’d go slowly crazy. Ironically, the only saving grace was the ‘hard labour’ part of their sentence, as that was likely to mean that they would at least spent part of their time outside the prison as he didn’t think even their current travesty of a government had gone as far as bringing back the treadmill, although it was probably only a matter of time before some bright spark in the prison service reinvented that particular wheel.

After ten minutes sitting doing nothing, Stephen muttered, “I need a pee.”

Quinn had shown them where the communal showers were, and they’d each been issued with a thin, scratchy towel, but they’d also been warned against taking a shower alone. According to their mentor, the showers were a dangerous place at the best of times, and he’d been quite clear on the subject of the guards. In Quinn’s opinion, none of them were to be trusted. As far as Stephen could gather, the soldiers were deemed to be not quite as bad, but they were there to enforce discipline and rarely interfered with the guards’ activities unless internal security was threatened. Their protection certainly couldn’t be relied on.

The shower room was in use. Stephen made his way over to the urinals in one corner, and did what he’d come for as quickly as he could before washing his hands at a cracked, dirty sink and drying them on his jumpsuit. He turned to leave and found his way blocked by a heavy-set man with a grubby towel wound around his waist. His arms and torso were covered with an array of tattoos, many of which looked homemade. A long image of a snake wound its way up the man’s left arm, ending on his chest with a fanged mouth dripping poison. 

Stephen drew in a long, slow breath. The noise of running water from the showers had stopped and he was suddenly and uncomfortably aware of the fact that three of the other men in the room had their attention focussed fully on him. The other was dressing quickly in one corner, doing his best to appear inconspicuous.

Odds of four to one weren’t good in anyone’s book. Stephen had already begun to doubt the wisdom of not heeding Danny’s warning and venturing in there on his own. The shaven-headed man with the snake tattoo leaned back against the closed door and stared at Stephen, his eyes travelling slowly up and down Stephen’s body.

“Pretty boy,” the man remarked. “Very pretty boy.” He let the towel fall open to reveal a thick, half-hard cock jutting out from a tangle of dark hair at his groin. An elaborate knotwork tattoo encircled one muscular thigh. The man dropped his hand to his cock and stroked it. “Like what you see?” he enquired, drawing his lips back to display a mouth full of crooked, nicotine-stained teeth.

An honest answer would almost certainly end with several broken teeth but there weren’t exactly many options open to him that were likely to have a better resolution. 

“I’m not looking for trouble,” Stephen said quietly, settling the weight evenly on both feet and preparing for violence that was almost certainly coming his way.

“Good. Suck my dick and we’ll get on just fine, pretty boy.”

“You’re not my type.” The words were out before Stephen could bite them back.

One of the other men whistled between his teeth. “Hear that, Gordie? Pretty boy says you’re not his type.”

“That’s a shame,” the man called Gordie said, still slowly stroking his cock. “I reckon you’re my type and that’s what matters most around here, ain’t it, lads?”

“You don’t wanna hurt Gordie’s feelings, pretty boy. He gets upset real easy.”

“He doesn’t look the sensitive type,” Stephen said, promptly compounding his earlier misdemeanour.

A burst of laughter from all four men greeted his words. The fifth man in the room was now in the far corner, fully dressed and clearly determined to stay well out of the way. Stephen certainly wouldn’t be able to count him as any sort of ally. Prison wasn’t the sort of place where you fought other people’s battles for them. He’d learned that the hard way during his first week on remand.

“You might not be looking for trouble, pretty boy, but you’ve just done a fuckin’ good job of finding it.”

A bang on the door signalled that someone else wanted to use the facilities.

“Fuck off.” The words were delivered loudly enough to be heard on the other side of the door. 

Whoever it was decided not to debate the matter and Stephen heard the sound of retreating footsteps. The best he could hope for was that the man might alert one of the guards to the fact that there was trouble in the offing, but that was almost certainly a vain hope.

He weighed up his chances of getting in one good kick to the guy’s balls and yanking open the door. Being naked wasn’t an advantage in a fight, but there was something about the man’s relaxed stance that spoke volumes for his confidence. He was heavy without being muscle-bound and Stephen was certain that for all his bulk, Gordie would prove to be both fast and light on his feet.

Basically, he had a simple choice. Start a fight and get the shit kicked out of him before he got raped, or just let it happen. Neither were an attractive proposition but Stephen wasn’t one to back down from a confrontation. He took a step backwards, testing the other man’s reactions. Gordie didn’t move, but his acolytes did. One of them stepped towards him and dropped a heavy hand onto Stephen’s shoulder. He let it lie there, knowing he could break the grip at a time of his choosing. 

“Gordie told you to suck his dick, pretty boy. It’s not good manners to keep the man waiting.”

The pressure on his shoulder increased and Stephen knew that his time was running out. He tried to remember how long it had been since he’d left Nick and Connor. Five minutes at the most, no longer. Not enough for either of them to come looking for him, and frankly, even if they did, he doubted it would do him any good. Nick was handy enough with his fists when the occasion warranted it but he wouldn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance against these guys, and nor would Connor. The only one who might be some help was Danny Quinn, but he had no reason to lay his neck on the line for someone he’d only just met. Someone he hadn’t exactly got off to a good start with…

Knowing that the situation was about to turn nasty no matter what he did, Stephen opted for action rather than quiescence. He slipped easily out of the grasp of the man at his side, elbowing him hard in the guts and pivoting on one foot to launch a fast strike at Gordie’s groin, but as fast as Stephen was, Gordie was quicker. The man’s right hand moved as fast as a striking snake and grabbed hold of Stephen’s ankle, thick fingers gripping him like a vice, pulling him off balance and sending him crashing to the floor. A second later a foot slammed into his solar plexus and blows started to rain down on him, too fast for Stephen to counter. He tried to curl up in a defensive ball until he could find an opening – however small – to exploit, but the chances of that were looking more remote by the second.

Rough hands took hold of his wrists and ankles and Stephen realised that the men had started to strip him. He twisted his head, trying to use the only weapon open to him – his teeth – but all that did was earn him a heavy blow across the face that promptly opened the cut that the guard had caused the previous day. In a bewilderingly short space of time, Stephen was naked and on his knees in front of Gordie.

The man’s cock was rock-hard, the head dark and swollen, the large vein on the underside standing out almost as blue as the prison tattoos. Stephen clenched his teeth shut. There was no way he was sucking that bastard’s cock. He’d yelled loudly when they’d taken him down, hoping that someone would hear the noise and alert the guards but there hadn’t been any sign that anyone had heard, or if they had, they clearly didn’t care.

One of Gordie’s large hands lashed out and his knuckles caught Stephen on his already-bleeding cheek, bringing the sharp sting of tears to his eyes and snapping his head sideways.

“Not clever, pretty boy, not clever at all. I offered you the chance to play nicely and look what you’ve gone and done.” The confidence in Gordie’s voice was unmistakeable. He knew bloody well that no one was going to ride to Stephen’s rescue. “Get him on his hands and knees, lads, I want to take a good look at that sweet little arse of his.”

Another sharp kick in his guts put paid to any thoughts Stephen had entertained of fighting back, and he found himself down on the tiled floor, his knees spread wide. All four of Gordie’s helpers were holding him down as he struggled to breathe, dragging air into lungs that felt like they were on fire. He felt fingers prizing his buttocks apart and then a gobbet of spittle landed in his crack.

“Don’t say I’m not trying to make this easy for you, pretty boy…”

Stephen felt the blunt head of Gordie’s cock pressing against his arsehole. Spit made a lousy lubricant at the best of times, and this certainly wasn’t the best of times. Stephen bit down on his already-swollen lip, trying not to give the bastard the satisfaction of hearing him cry out. He could smell rank sweat and knew that Gordie wasn’t the only one who was aroused. If someone didn’t stop this, he would end up being gang-raped the way Danny Quinn had been, and there was nothing he could do to stop it happening.

Gordie’s hands settled on his hips, holding him in place as he thrust forwards with his hips, doing his best to drive his cock into Stephen’s dry, unprepared body.

A moment later, hope flared brightly as Stephen heard the door opening. He looked up and caught sight of grey uniform trousers above a pair of black boots. 

The pressure on his arse didn’t let up.

The guard stepped into the room and the door closed behind him. The man hadn’t said a word and Stephen’s hope died inside him as quickly as it had come.

“Hello, Mr Jackson,” Gordie said as he tugged backwards on Stephen’s hips and started to slowly but inexorably impale Stephen on his cock. 

“Hello, Gordie. Havin’ fun?”

“He’s a tight-arsed little fucker, but I’ll soon loosen him up for you.” Gordie slammed his hips forward, finally breaching Stephen’s defences. “Won’t I, pretty boy?”

Stephen felt the drag against his unlubricated channel as Gordie pulled back, he heard him spit again, and then pain lanced through him as Gordie thrust back in, this time burying himself balls deep, grunting with the effort. Stephen lost an unequal struggle for self-control and grunted with pain. It hurt so fucking much he wanted to yel with pain, but he wouldn’t give the bastards the satisfaction of knowing that they were close to breaking him.

Still biting down on his lip, Stephen looked up at the man who had struck him across the face the day before and knew he’d get no help from that quarter. 

Jackson stared down at him and then spat full in Stephen’s face. “You look good like that, pretty boy. Best place for you, on your knees.” 

Stephen could see the bulge already tenting the man’s uniform trousers. It looked like someone else had decided to join the party.

He really should have listened to Quinn.


	9. Chapter 9

The rain had turned from drizzle to a steady stream of water falling from a granite-coloured sky. Danny Quinn shoved his hands in his pockets and sauntered inside, heading in the direction of the main recreation room. It had been obvious from the moment the lockdown had ended that the atmosphere in the prison was so thick it could have been cut with a knife and he was determined to find out why.

All he’d been able to discover so far was that the lockdown had been triggered by some sort of incident up on the moor the previous day. Escape attempts were unusual, but not unknown, although it was rare for them to be kept quiet after the event. In this case, the screws were even tighter-lipped than usual and if his fellow inmates knew anything then they were all keeping schtum, which was also unusual.

The rec room was crowded and smelled of unwashed bodies, reminding Danny that he could probably do with getting more closely acquainted with some soap and water, but the sight of one of Gordie Fraser’s cronies hanging around outside the door of the shower room had been enough to put him off that idea. Fraser wasn’t a good guy to mess with and Danny preferred to stay out of trouble where at all possible. No one liked an ex-copper, so his life was tricky enough anyway without getting on the wrong side of one of the prison’s genuine hard men.

His new cellmates were sitting in one corner, doing their best to look inconspicuous… or at least two of them were. Danny glanced quickly around the room. The dark-haired guy, Stephen Hart, was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s your mate?” Danny asked, trying to keep the urgency out of his voice.

“Gone to the bathroom,” Connor said.

Danny rolled his eyes. “What is it with you three? What part of ‘don’t go to the bogs on your own’ was hard to understand?”

“He just wanted a…”

“I don’t need the fucking details, kid.”

“What’s the problem?” Nick Cutter demanded. “He’s only been gone a few minutes.”

“The problem is that I saw one of Gordie Fraser’s lads hanging around outside the door dispensing dirty looks like they were going out of fashion.”

“So?”

“So if your mate is in there, the chances are high that he’s got Gordie’s dick up his arse by now.”

Nick Cutter jumped to his feet, a look of alarm on his face.

Danny shot out a hand and pushed him back down into the chair. “Leave this to me.”

The guard on duty in the recreation room would be no use if there was trouble going down in the shower room. He was an old-timer on the run up to retirement, serving his sentence as much as any of the prisoners, determined to stay out of trouble and collect his pension. He wouldn’t put himself on the line for anyone. If Danny wanted back-up, he’d have to look for it elsewhere.

Gordie Fraser’s minion was still outside the showers, leaning back against the wall, a slight grin on his face as he shook his head at anyone who approached and jerked a grubby thumb down the corridor. From somewhere he’d found a yellow plastic ‘cleaning in progress’ sign and had plonked it down in front of the door.

Danny looked down at the sign and shook his head. “Sod that, I need a slash.”

“Not here you don’t,” the man said. “Fuck off, Danny-boy.”

“’ave a heart, mate, I’m dying for a piss. What’s it to you?”

A sharp cry of pain from behind the door told Danny all he needed to know.

The man’s face hardened and he straightened up, squaring up to Danny, one hand in his pocket, probably on a homemade knife. “I told you, Danny-boy, fuck off and fuck off now. Gordie don’t take kindly to bein’ messed with. You don’t wanna get on ‘is wrong side, do you?”

The sound of heavy boots on the scuffed vinyl flooring betrayed the approach of either a guard or a soldier. Coming towards them down the corridor was the blond captain whose men had been drafted in to help contain the growing problem of violence in the prison population. Danny hadn’t had much contact with him; the most he knew was that the soldier had a reputation for being hard but fair.

A grunt from inside the shower room made the hairs on the back of Danny’s neck stand up. He’d heard that sort of noise before and he’d been on the receiving end of the sort of activity that led to it. Without stopping to think, Danny drove his fist hard into the guts of the man blocking his way, following the blow up with a teeth-rattling knee to the jaw as his opponent folded over, clearly not expecting the sudden violence. Danny grabbed him by the collar of his orange boiler suit and slid him across the corridor.

Hoping that the soldier wouldn’t be far behind him, Danny grabbed hold of the door handle and pressed it down, feeling resistance from someone on the inside. He stepped back and slammed his foot against wood, putting as much force as he could behind the kick. A yell of ‘Fuck off!’ told him that someone didn’t appreciate being interrupted, which was hardly surprising given the sight that met his eyes.

Stephen Hart was on his hands and knees, naked, being held down by three of Gordie Fraser’s cronies while the man himself pounded his cock hard into his victim’s arse. Danny could see Hart’s face contorted in pain. Blood was smeared across his cheek and he was biting down hard on his lower lip in an attempt to stop himself crying out at the abuse being inflicted on his clearly unwilling body.

“You heard the man. Fuck off, Quinn.” The order came from a man in a grey guard’s uniform.

Danny recognised Jackson and his heart sank. The man was well-known in the prison for being a bastard and was widely believed to be deep in the pockets of the likes of Fraser. The fact that Gordie Fraser hadn’t even broken stride in his activities testified to that. Meeting Danny’s horrified gaze, all he did was continue to thrust deeply into Hart’s arse, a wide smile on his face.

If Captain Ryan decided not to break up this little party there was going to be precious little Danny could do to bring an end to the rape as it was obvious from the bulge in the man’s uniform trousers that Jackson was intending to be next in line.

Danny took a step backwards, forcing an expression of subservience onto his face in place of the disgust he really felt, but the sound of running footsteps in the corridor was enough to alert the men in the room to his game. Fraser grabbed hold of Hart’s hips and thrust in again, from the look on his face finally reaching climax. He withdrew and then clambered to his feet, grabbing a towel from the floor and winding it around his waist, hiding the bloodstains on his softening cock.

The three men who had been holding Hart jumped up and backed off.

“What the fuck is going on?” Ryan’s voice was low and dangerous.

“New boy wanted to trade some favours for fags,” Jackson said, extending his leg and pushing Hart over onto his side. “Then the little shit decided to cry rape. He looked willing enough when I arrived,” the prison officer added, leering down at the man curled up on the floor, eyes tightly closed.

“Lying fucking bastard,” Danny muttered, dropping to his knees and putting a hand on Hart’s shoulder. The other man flinched away from him. “It’s OK, mate, I’ve got you.” Danny spoke softly, the way he would have done to an injured animal, knowing that Hart was probably beyond the point of understanding his words, but hoping that the tone would register with him, if nothing else.

He heard Ryan calmly demanding the services of a medic and realised the captain must have been speaking into his radio. From somewhere a prison issue towel appeared and Danny used it to cover Hart’s naked body. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing and he knew from his own experience how bad Hart was likely to be feeling.

Danny stroked the man’s sweat-slick dark hair back from his pale forehead and looked up to meet Ryan’s ice-blue eyes. The soldier was clearly furious and didn’t care who knew it, but Danny knew that Ryan was going to have a hard job proving this had been rape. Gordie Fraser had several witnesses, including a prison officer, who would swear blind that Hart had been a willing participant.

And that made it game, set and match to Gordie Fraser.


	10. Chapter 10

“Get the fuck out of here!”

From his position curled up on the floor of the shower room, Stephen heard the soldier barking orders, barely restrained anger in his voice. Knowing his luck, the man would want to be in line for seconds.

Stephen tried to push himself up off the cold tiles, knowing he’d been a bloody idiot to have disregarded Quinn’s warnings and not wanting to look the man – or anyone else, for that matter – in the face. He had started to shake violently and slid on the wet floor. Quinn’s hands gripped him under the arms and heaved him up into a sitting positing. The towel that had been thrown over him slid to the ground, leaving Stephen naked and vulnerable. Quinn grabbed it and draped it back over him.

“Thanks,” Stephen murmured.

The black-uniformed soldier went down on one knee next to him. Stephen recognised him as the captain who had supervised their arrival the previous day, after his first run in with the guard who only a few minutes ago had been so obviously eager to take his turn fucking him.

“How badly are you hurt?” the soldier asked him, talking to Stephen in the sort of voice he would probably have used on a frightened dog. “My name’s Ryan and just so you know, rape isn’t my idea of fun.”

“I’ll live,” Stephen said between gritted teeth, trying to ignore the burning pain in his arse and the bitter feeling of humiliation.

“We’ll let the medic be the judge of that,” Ryan said. He held his hand down to Stephen and helped Quinn haul him to his feet. The man’s grip was firm and Stephen felt the gun calluses on his palm. “You’d better put your boiler suit back on. I don’t imagine you want to walk to the medical bay with just a towel around your waist.” The soldier switched his attention to Quinn. “Help him.”

“I can manage,” Stephen said, but the way his hands shook belied his words. With Quinn’s assistance, he pulled on the orange one-piece suit, stuffed his underwear and socks into the pockets, picked up his teeshirt and shoved his bare feet into the prison-issue trainers, but straightening out the elastic straps was beyond him. Bending down hurt. In fact everything hurt.

With Quinn still at his side, Stephen managed to follow Ryan down a long series of corridors and through numerous locked doors until they reached the prison’s medical bay. The soldier-medic who had conducted the full body search the previous day was sitting behind a desk entering some data onto a computer. He looked up as they entered and rolled his eyes when he saw the state of Stephen’s face.

“It didn’t take you long to get into trouble, mate, did it?” The medic stood up and jerked his head in the direction of a side room. “Come on.”

“He’s had Gordie Fraser’s cock up his arse,” Ryan commented as the door closed behind them. “And he didn’t look happy about it.”

The medic rolled his eyes. “Can’t imagine anyone would be too happy about that. OK, sunshine, get your kit off and let’s see how much damage he’s done.” He glanced at Danny Quinn and asked, “Do you want him to stay?”

Stephen hesitated, not wanting Quinn to witness his further humiliation, but also aware of the fact that the man had come to his aid, although if the soldiers decided to take advantage of him in any way, Quinn’s presence wouldn’t be any help to him.

Seeing his hesitation, the medic took charge and made the decision for him. “Wait outside the door, Quinn.”

Quinn shot Stephen a sympathetic glance. From what he’d said to Stephen that morning, it was clear he knew what Stephen had gone through, but alongside Stephen’s pain was a sharp pang of embarrassment at having been stupid enough to disregard Quinn’s warnings.

As the door closed behind Quinn, Ryan said, “Jackson was just about to take a turn, Ditz.”

“Tell me something new,” the man called Ditz said with obvious distaste. “This is the second time this week I’ve patched someone up when he’s been tag-teaming with Fraser. Are you going to talk to Lester about it?”

“If I can get him on his own without Leek there, yes. I’ll want a report from you.”

The medic nodded, then said to Stephen, “OK, sunshine, get your kit off again.” As Stephen fumbled with the buttons on his orange suit, the man took a blister pack of tablets out of a cupboard, popped two out and poured a glass of water. “Take these; they’ll help with the pain.”

Naked and self-conscious under the two men’s dispassionate gaze, Stephen swallowed the tablets and washed them down with a gulp of water, pleased to note that his hands weren’t shaking quite as badly as they had been doing. The medic checked out his split and bitten lip that already felt swollen to twice its normal size and smeared on some cool gel that almost immediately brought some relief from the pain. How the calm, reassuring medic had managed to earn a nickname like Ditzy, Stephen couldn’t imagine, as it seemed a long way from the truth. The man carefully probed Stephen’s ribs and the rest of his body for damage, earning himself a sharp intake of breath as his cold fingers pressed on the already purpling bruise on his abdomen where someone had kicked him.

“You might have a cracked rib, but there’s bugger all I can do about that. I’ll try to keep you off any heavy work for a few weeks. OK, that’s the easy bit done.” Ditzy pulled a long strip of coarse paper off a dispenser on the wall and laid it down on the narrow examination bed. “On your front. I’ll try not to make this any worse than it already is, and remember, I’ve already had my fingers up your arse, so it’s nothing new for either of us.”

Stephen dredged up a grin from somewhere and manoeuvred himself carefully onto the bed, feeling an unwelcome stab of pain from his ribs. Jesus, he’d been in Dartmoor barely 24 hours and he’d already managed to get beaten up and raped. Not the most auspicious of starts. He heard the all too familiar snap of a pair of latex gloves being pulled on and then a pair of surprisingly gentle hands parted his arse cheeks. Stephen heard the sharp intake of breath normally associated with garage mechanics and plumbers when dealing with a customer.

“Gordie’s a big sod,” Ditzy remarked in an incongruously conversational tone of voice. “Got a dick like a bloody flagpole. OK, hold onto your hat, I’m going in. I need to take some swabs first for tests, then I’m going to use some antiseptic gel. It’ll feel cold, but it shouldn’t sting too much. The object of the exercise is to numb your arse a bit, like I did with your lip.”

As Ditzy gave his running commentary, Stephen felt a slick finger slip inside his body followed by something that felt like a small spatula. It fucking hut and he had a hard job stifling a yelp. A second swab was taken and then the finger probed gently, smearing the gel inside him. He tried to cut his mind off from the humiliation of knowing the medic was holding his arse cheeks open with the fingers of one hand while liberally coating the inside of his body with antiseptic with the other. Stephen closed his eyes and did his best to relax, trying to shut out the knowledge that Captain Ryan was watching them. Stephen was learning the hard way that there was no privacy in prison and that Dartmoor was a very different environment to the remand centre.

Another liberal smear of gel around his arse crack finished the proceedings.

“There’s some tearing,” Ditzy told him, stripping off the gloves and washing his hands at the small sink. “But all things considered, you got off quite lightly. It’ll hurt like fuck when you take a crap for the next week or so but do us all a favour and no straining, OK? If the painkillers bung you up, let me know and I’ll give you a laxative. You’ll need to see me twice a day for painkillers and antibiotics. If there’s a lockdown, I’ll come to you, otherwise see me after breakfast and dinner until I say otherwise, OK?”

Stephen got down carefully from the bed and pulled on his underwear and clothes. Another round of tablets followed.

“Take five minutes by yourself,” Ryan said quietly. “Then Quinn can take you back to the wing.” The soldier hesitated and then added, “With your looks, you won’t find it easy in here. My men won’t stand for this sort of thing, but we can’t be everywhere at once. Quinn knows his way around the place. Listen to him and you won’t go too far wrong.”

Stephen managed to meet the man’s eyes and nod. He’d experienced at first hand the consequences of ignoring good advice. He wouldn’t make that mistake twice. He’d always had a suspicion that he wouldn’t get out of prison without an experience like the one he’d just been through and if Quinn could seemingly put it behind him, so could he. Cutter wouldn’t be happy and would use it as an excuse to heap more burning coals of guilt onto his own head, but Stephen knew perfectly well he had no chance of keeping what had happened quiet, the news would no doubt already have spread like a dose of herpes.

He took the five minutes Ryan had offered, focusing his attention on the second hand sweeping around the wall clock, doing his best to ignore the ache in his arse and the pain from his ribs and then drew in a long breath.

It was time to face the consequences of his own stupidity.


	11. Chapter 11

Stephen did his best to ignore the jeers and the cat calls directed at him as he walked back to the cell. The pain from his arse was harder to ignore. It was bloody obvious that Fraser had already spread the word of what had gone on and Stephen’s cheeks were hot with embarrassment.

“Just keep walking,” Quinn said quietly, pacing at his side like an unlikely guard dog. “Ignore them.”

Stephen just wished he’d heeded the man’s warnings and not ended up in this mess.

“Don’t worry, Hart,” yelled one of the men who’d been with Fraser in the showers. “You’re too old for Quinn, but your little mate had better watch out!”

“Nah, he’s way too old for Quinn.” A prisoner lounging against the wall threw his head back and laughed loudly. “Yours were half his age, weren’t they, Danny boy? Must have been a great job for you on Vice. Shame you couldn’t keep your dick to yourself.”

Stephen fought to keep a neutral face but inside his stomach was crawling like a sack full of ferrets.

“Don’t listen to them,” Quinn hissed. “They’re lying.”

Stephen concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. The heckling continued, following them all the way back to the cells. As he walked he could see Gordie Fraser lounging at ease in a chair by the far wall, watching their progress along the wing. The man raised one hand and waved to Stephen, a broad grin on his face. Stephen kept his eyes fixed on his goal as the cell door came steadily closer. Last night he’d never thought that the cramped cell would ever represent any sort of haven, but now he was just glad to get away from the stares and jeers of the other prisoners.

As Stephen stepped through the narrow doorway, Cutter jumped up off his bunk, his eyes anxious, his hand reaching out for Stephen’s arm. Unable to stop himself, Stephen flinched away from the contact.

“Sorry, sorry…” Cutter mumbled, look awkward. “We heard… are you…?”

Stephen held up a hand. “I’m OK, Cutter. It could have been worse, and it’s thanks to Quinn that it wasn’t.” But Stephen’s head was now whirling with the innuendo being bandied about by the men outside on the wing, and despite Quinn’s help and support, Stephen wasn’t sure what to believe or who to trust now, and it was clear from the looks that both Cutter and Connor were shooting their cell-mate that similar rumours had now reached them.

“I can explain,” Quinn said quickly. “I was set up.”

Despite their situation, Stephen felt a laugh bubbling up inside him: part-hysteria, part-disbelief. “We’re in prison. Isn’t that what we’re all meant to say?”

Quinn ran a hand through his ginger hair, making it stand up straight from his head. “I was a copper,” he said slowly, his eyes meeting Stephen’s steadily. “I did a stint in the Vice Squad, and vice is the right way to describe it. The majority of them were on the take one way or another. A blow-job without paying for it, a cut from a pimp to let the girls work a particular patch. You name it, it was going on. Yeah, sure, I’d broken the rules a few times – you show me the copper who hasn’t and I’ll show you a good liar – but not like that. Not trafficking in someone else’s misery. Most of them were just kids, too scared to say no if some bastard who should have been better than that wanted a freebie.”

“You told me you weren’t a nonce,” Stephen said, his voice quiet and level. Quinn had helped him; he didn’t want to believe what the men outside the cell were saying, but in a place like this, how was anyone meant to know the truth?

“And I’m not.” Quinn continued to meet Stephen’s eyes. “I wouldn’t play ball with their little games, so they planted kiddie porn on my computer and then sent a tip off to my guv’nor. He wasn’t too keen on me, either, so he added a few bits of his own. End result: the trial was a sham and I end up banged up for seven years. They used to put coppers who ended up in the nick on seg for their own safety, but not now. The prisons are too crowded to bother with segregation, so I had to take my chances with everyone else. I was lucky ending up with you three. Albany wasn’t quite so nice.”

“And so someone decided to give you a taste of your own medicine, or so they thought.”

Quinn nodded. He hesitated, then said, “You can believe me or not, Hart, but I’m telling you the truth, just like I did this morning. I’m no nonce and I was set up.”

The man’s blue eyes were steady, his craggy face studiously expressionless, but below the surface he could see a revealing mixture of pain and resentment simmering in a stew of frustration. Stephen hadn’t doubted the sincerity of Quinn’s revelation earlier that morning and, to his surprise, he didn’t doubt him now, either. Quinn had put himself at risk coming to Stephen’s aid, so who was he going to believe? A bunch of men who thought it was funny that he’d been forced to take it up the arse from Gordie Fraser or the man who’d done his best to help him?

No contest, really.

Stephen put his hand out to Quinn. “I believe you.”

The look in Quinn’s eyes was one that Stephen wouldn’t forget in a hurry. Despite the man’s tough exterior, he’d obviously become used to being treated with suspicion, one of the lowest of the low in the prison system, but despite that he’d still stuck his neck out for someone he barely knew.

Quinn gripped Stephen’s hand firmly. “Thanks, Hart.”

Stephen dredged up a smile from somewhere, despite the fact that his head was pounding, his arse felt like someone had shoved a flagpole up it sideways and if he didn’t get horizontal soon, he’d probably fall down. “Call me Stephen, if you like.”

Quinn flashed him a cheerful grin that failed to give the lie to the pain clouding his eyes. “Thanks. My friends usually still call me Quinn, but I’ll answer to Danny.”

Cutter and Connor had been watching the exchange closely. Connor’s nervousness still lurked below the surface, but the belligerent expression had faded from Cutter’s face, leaving behind the sort of embarrassed unease that marked him whenever emotions threatened to intrude where they weren’t wanted. Stephen had seen the same look once when one of his third year students had dissolved into tears during a meeting to discuss her dissertation and admitted that her boyfriend had just walked out on her. Cutter had looked horrified, failed to find a clean handkerchief and scuttled off, leaving Stephen to provide a shoulder to cry on.

But a cell this size didn’t come complete with hiding places, so they were just going to have to deal with this one as best they could.

“I’m fine, Cutter,” Stephen said. “My pride’s hurt and I feel like a fucking idiot, but I’ll get over it.” Stephen knew that if Cutter offered sympathy, he was likely to break down, and that wasn’t something Stephen was prepared to do, not with Fraser and his cronies in earshot.

“Suspect your arse hurts, too,” Quinn commented, with a rueful grin. “I know mine did.”

Stephen rolled his eyes. “Do me a favour, Quinn, don’t spoil my tough-guy act.”

Grabbing the edge of the top bunk, Stephen hauled himself up, doing his best to suppress a groan at the pain that bloomed throughout his body. He sprawled out on his stomach, his face pillowed on his arms, trying to ignore the hollow feeling inside. An hour later, still lying there, he started to shake. Not long after that, tears started to come as well, but if any of his companions were aware of what was happening, they respected what little was left of his privacy and simply left him alone.

It was all anyone could do for him.


	12. Chapter 12

Nick Cutter pulled up the collar of the bright orange jacket he’d been issued with that morning. This was the first time he’d set foot outside the confines of Dartmoor Prison since his arrival there just over a week ago. Nick and Connor, together with Danny Quinn, the man who had become the nearest thing to a friend they had, had been assigned to an outside work group. Stephen, still recovering from the injuries he’d received on their second day, had remained behind on medical orders.

Nick blamed himself for what had happened to Stephen. If it hadn’t been for his association with Nick, Stephen wouldn’t be in this predicament. And neither would Connor. Nick knew that it was intellectual arrogance and stubborn refusal to keep quiet like so many of his colleagues had been doing that had landed them in this mess. As a result, Stephen was recovering from rape and they were all doing their best to ensure that Connor didn’t end up the same way.

Dartmoor was, as Stephen had discovered, an altogether harsher environment than the remand centre where they’d been held before the trial. The prison was over-crowded, staffed with the dregs of the prison system, and seemed to harbour as many potential rapists as a fox has fleas, which was one of the reasons why the soldiers had been drafted in. It was their job to contain the simmering stew of resentment and prevent a descent into the recent riots that had swept the country’s jails.

The new governor clearly believed in the value of hard work. A gang of thirty inmates, all wearing leg shackles, secured to each other by a long length of stainless steel chain, were currently outside in the freezing rain, breaking rocks by hand in the previously-disused Merrivale Quarry. One of the guards was clearly something of a local history buff and had taken great delight in informing the work party that the quarry, which had last been worked commercially in 1997, had supplied the stone for the Falklands Memorial in London, a fact that had been met with a nod of approval by the young soldier who had accompanied the group.

They were currently breaking up granite by hand, using lump hammers that were nowhere near big enough for the job. As far as Nick could see, the whole process was designed around punishment rather than productivity. The rain had been coming down steadily all morning and he was soaked to the skin. The jacket he’d been given was waterlogged and wet trails had been making their way down Nick’s back for the last two hours. Only the backbreaking work had gone any way to keeping him warm and even that was no longer helping. His hands were white and pinched with the cold and he had long since stopped feeling his feet inside the flimsy trainers.

At Nick’s side, Connor was shivering violently and looked on the point of exhaustion. The hammer slipped from the young man’s fingers to clatter down on the grey rocks at their feet.

“Pick it up!” The guard must have already been watching them to have reacted so quickly.

Nick recognised the man’s voice. It was Jackson, the guard who had struck Stephen only minutes after their arrival. The same man who had been quite prepared to cover up Stephen’s rape and was no doubt still biding his time before he could take his own pleasure. Since that day, none of them had gone anywhere alone in the prison. It was no protection against the guards, but so far they had managed – with Danny Quinn’s help – to steer clear of any more trouble, and Captain Ryan and his men had been vigilant. But out here they only had one young soldier on duty and he looked barely old enough to have enlisted, let alone be a member of an elite unit. Nick could only presume that with the current state of the country, entry requirements had become somewhat less rigorous.

Connor reached down for the lump hammer, but as he picked it up, the short wooden handle slipped out of his numb fingers and clattered to the ground again.

“Pick it up, you idle little fucker!”

“He’s cold, not idle!” The words were out of Nick’s mouth before he could bite them back.

“Then he’ll just have to work harder, won’t he? That’ll warm the little shit up.”

The man was the sneering epitome of everything that Nick hated about the current travesty of a criminal justice system that gave men like Jackson free rein whilst depriving young men like Connor Temple of their liberty for nothing more than adherence to the principles of science. Nick felt his temper rising inexorably to the surface and he tightened his grip on the handle of the heavy hammer in his hands.

The rasp of metal on metal told Nick that somewhere behind him the slide on a semi-automatic pistol had just been drawn back, pumping a round into the weapon’s breech. Until his committal to prison he’d been wholly ignorant of such sounds, but like any scientist, he was a quick learner.

“The men need a rest and a hot drink.” The speaker was the young soldier who had accompanied the group. “They’re half an hour overdue for a break.” The man raised his voice and addressed the work group as a whole. “Put your hammers down and step away from them!”

“They don’t deserve a bloody rest,” Jackson grumbled, but Nick noted that he didn’t seem too inclined to press the point. A quick glance over his shoulder told Nick that the soldier was standing about ten metres away looking deceptively relaxed, an assault rifle slung over his shoulder and the semi-automatic pistol, a Glock 19, according to Stephen, who knew about that sort of thing, held parallel to his leg, the barrel pointing at the ground.

The hard look in the man’s eyes belied his youthful looks and made Nick revise his earlier estimation.

“Going soft on them, Cooper?” Jackson’s challenge was half-hearted but he clearly wanted to avoid losing stature in the eyes of the prisoners.

“I wasn’t soft on the one I shot in the leg two days ago,” the man called Cooper said mildly.

Jackson grinned and took the opportunity presented to him to align himself with the soldier. “Little fucker squealed like a rabbit. He wasn’t expecting that, was he?”

Nick had seen the incident they were talking about. It had happened in the exercise yard. Two prisoners had got into a fight and had resisted the attempts of one of the guards to break them up. When one of bystanders had taken it into his head to add to the mayhem by thumping the guard, the young soldier had taken decisive action when his shouted warning had gone unheeded. The man had ended up in the medical bay, minus a kneecap, where he would no doubt remain for some while.

Cooper grinned back, diffusing the tension, although Nick could see that the hardness hadn’t left his eyes. “I reckon they think we carry these for the fun of it,” he remarked, watching the row of men closely to make sure that his order was being carried out.

When all the hammers had been laid down, Cooper motioned with his pistol over to the two transit vans parked next to a derelict building. “There’s coffee and some energy bars over there. You’ve got half an hour. Make the most of it.”

The men shuffled over to the vans, took the polystyrene cups of hot coffee that one of the guards handed out, grabbed a couple of energy bars each and then did their best to huddle together by the side of the building, doing their best to stay out of the driving rain.

Nick gulped down his coffee while it was still hot and then chewed the meagre ration of food slowly. The rain had slackened off slightly but it was now being replaced by mist. The air was cold and clammy and the quarry was soon shrouded in grey. Nick was actually quite pleased to get back to work as standing around had just made him feel worse. His prison-issue clothing was sticking to him and he was chilled to the bone. At his side, Connor was still shaking with cold and Nick was concerned about the risk of hypothermia. Danny had slipped the lad some of his food ration and insisted on him eating it, which had made Nick feel guilty about eating both of his own energy bars.

The mist brought with it a noticeable edginess in both the prisoners and the guards. The tale of what had happened on the moor on the day Nick and the others had arrived on Dartmoor had eventually spread throughout the prison, no doubt growing in the telling, as Nick found it hard to believe the stories of dismembered bodies and a creature that sounded like something out of a Conan Doyle novel. But the nervousness was clearly catching, and Nick was aware of the frequent glances Connor and the others were casting into the gathering gloom.

Nick saw the young soldier standing by the vehicles talking into his mobile phone. His rifle was now slung across his chest and Nick was aware of a higher state of alertness both in him and in the guards.

He nudged Danny and muttered, “They’re expecting trouble of some sort, aren’t they?”

Danny nodded. “This is the first work party out on the moor since that business last week. There’s bound to be…”

The distant sound of gunfire cut across Danny’s words. The prisoners weren’t the only ones who looked startled. The guards grabbed their tasers and stared around into the mist.

The soldier – Cooper – strode over, still talking into his phone. “Boss, what the fuck’s going on? Someone out here is shooting…” He listened for a moment, said, “OK, great, it’s fucking crap out here and getting worse.” He shoved his phone back into his pocket. “Calm down! You can blame the MOD for the noise!” he yelled, his voice steady and reassuring. “All right, the guv’nor’s taken pity on the lot of you and I’ve been told we can take you back in. Hammers down and make your way back to the vans!”

Nick looked at Danny. “MOD?”

“There’s a firing range bordering on the quarry,” Danny told him. “We do sometimes hear shots, but they aren’t normally out in this sort of weather.”

The staccato sound of rifle shots came again.

A sudden drag on the shackle around his left ankle stopped Nick in his tracks. Connor had come to a halt and was staring into the mist. A moment later a large shape hurtled down from the rock face above them and cannoned into the line of chained men. Instant pandemonium erupted. A cry of pain and fear was abruptly choked off. More screams came from both sides.

A single gun shot rang out at close quarters followed by a growl that raised the hairs on the back of Nick’s neck. The mist was now too thick even to see the men at either end of the chain. Moments later, Nick felt his feet being pulled in two different directions and he fell to the ground. The side-effect of shackling each prisoner to the next became immediately obvious. The panicked men were pulling each other in different directions and they were starting to go down like dominos. Nick flung his hand out, trying to push himself upright and his fingers closed around the handle of a hammer discarded by one of the other men.

Another growl cut across the screams and something large and hairy barrelled past Nick. Acting on instinct, he struck out with the hammer and felt it connect and then the creature was past them and heading off into the mist. He caught a brief glimpse of a dark, brindled pelt and heard the sound of gunshots at much closer quarters as Cooper fired on their attacker.

With the sound of gunfire still ringing in his ears, Nick gripped the handle of the hammer ever harder and wondered what the hell had just happened.


	13. Chapter 13

Ryan jammed his foot on the brakes and took the corner into the tall gates in a squeal of brakes and a spray of gravel. The moor was blanketed in mist and he’d nearly reduced a couple of stray sheep to roadkill on his way from the prison to Merrivale Quarry. In the front seat, Jenny Lewis kept her hands fisted around the seatbelt but had passed no comment on Ryan’s driving. The press officer was a woman who prided herself on maintaining an icy composure at all times, but Ryan knew his driving speeds had tested even her iron resolve.

As soon as the first reports had reached the prison of another incident on the moor, Lester had insisted on Jenny accompanying Ryan to deal with the police and any press that might have got wind of the latest events. On the way across the moor, she had managed to get a mobile signal for long enough to get through to Abby Maitland, the animal expert who had attended the first scene. The other woman was now on her way and would be with them within the hour.

From the back of the Range Rover, Lyle, Ditzy and Finn had offered a cheerfully rude commentary on his rallying abilities, but the banter promptly stopped as Ryan brought the vehicle to a halt next to the vans that had been used to transport the work party to the quarry.

Darren Cooper – known to the rest of the squad as Kermit – met them with evident relief. He had a streak of blood across his forehead and more smeared on his uniform, but Ryan already knew he was uninjured, so he presumed it had come from one of the casualties.

The first report had been sketchy, just the information that the group had fallen victim to another large animal attack and that they needed both back-up and medical help. An ambulance was on its way as well, but Ryan had wanted to get there as quickly as possible to assess the situation.

“Jackson’s over there!” Kermit told Ditzy. “He’s lost a lot of blood. Fucking thing damn nearly ripped his guts out. Bateson’s dead. It crushed his throat. We’ve got other minor injuries as well. There are some tracks in the mud and I’ve done what we can to preserve the scene.” He waved his hand at a man in camouflage uniform standing next to him, a rifle held across his chest. “This is Sergeant Taylor. He was on the MOD range and saw it.”

Ryan nodded and shook the man’s hand. “We can run through what you saw in a minute. Ditz, tell me if there’s anything you want us to do before the ambulance gets here. Finn, the tracks are your business. I want to know where it came from and where it’s gone to. Lyle, ride shotgun for him. If you see it, I want it dead. Ms Lewis, can you deal with the police when they turn up, please?”

“And I imagine the press won’t be far behind,” she commented with a disdainful look on her face. From what Ryan had gathered, the press weren’t exactly on her Christmas card list at the moment. She’d no doubt already heard enough Hound of the Baskervilles tales to last a lifetime and this was only going to catapult the story straight back into the headlines, no matter how hard they tried to keep a lid on events.

From what Ryan could piece together from Sergeant Taylor and Kermit, it seemed that the guys out on the MOD firing range had seen a large shape moving at a fast run through the mist. With stories of what had happened on the moor the previous week fresh in their minds, they’d decided to get in some target practice. The creature had been far too large for a dog although no one had got a clear view of it. Best estimates – even allowing for an element of exaggeration – put it at around two metres tall at the shoulder and something over three metres long, with a massive, heavily-jawed head.

“Someone must have seen something,” Ryan said in mounting frustration. “Kermit, question the prisoners. Keep back anyone who might have seen anything useful. Get the rest back to the prison as soon as possible.”

Kermit nodded and moved off in the direction of the huddle of uninjured prisoners, while Ditzy did the best he could with those who hadn’t been so lucky.

By the time the ambulance arrived, Jackson was capable of nothing more than incoherent moans and from the grim look on the paramedic’s face Ryan didn’t rate the guard’s chances very highly. Ryan didn’t like the man, but he wouldn’t have wished something like that on his worst enemy. The sight of Jackson’s guts pooled on his stomach like a bloodied mass of yellow string had caused at least two people to vomit violently and even the ambulance paramedics had looked like they’d seen pleasanter sights.

The creature appeared to have bounded down the sloping quarry face, bowled Jackson over, disembowelling him in the process, and hit the line of chained prisoners, causing immediate chaos, killing one and injuring several others. According to Ditzy, all the injuries looked like they had been inflicted by teeth rather than claws. There had been some hair left behind on Jackson’s uniform, snagged on the Velcro fasteners of his jacket cuff and around a button. Ditzy had bagged the hair and given it to him to show Abby Maitland when she arrived.

Ryan glanced in the direction of the quarry gates. He could also see Lyle and Finn at the edge of the quarry, kneeling on the ground, staring what he presumed were tracks. He’d heard them talking a while ago sounding puzzled, but had been too busy to check in with them. In addition, the police had just arrived and he could see one of the uniformed officers talking to a small woman with a shock of bleached blonde hair cut into a boyish bob, poking out from the hood of her parka. He recognised her from Stringer’s description. It looked like their animal expert had just turned up.

Abby Maitland had a firm handshake and a direct stare. “I need to see the tracks and talk to anyone who saw the attack.”

Ryan nodded. “That’s in hand, on both counts. He handed her the small plastic zip-lock bag that Ditzy had given him. “We’ve got some hair.”

She gave him an approving look and pocketed the packet. “I’ll look at that back at the zoo.”

Kermit came back over. “One of the prisoners says he got a look at the creature.”

Ryan nodded. “Keep him here, we’ll be back to talk to him as soon as Miss Maitland has looked at the tracks.” He led the way over to where Lyle and Finn were standing, staring at the ground.

“It doesn’t make any bloody sense, boss,” Finn told him as soon as they got within earshot. “Never seen tracks like these before.”

Ryan stared down at some deep marks on the wet ground. If it didn’t make any sense to Finn, then there was nothing he would be able to add. Rob Finn had grown up on Dartmoor before joining the army. He was the best man Ryan knew when it came to tracking, but he’d never professed to be a large animal expert. His expertise ran more to following sheep-worrying dogs.

Abby Maitland crouched down and studied the prints, then without saying a word, she walked off, following the trail for about ten metres before returning, looking as puzzled as Finn. In answer to Ryan’s raised eyebrows, she simply shook her head, shrugged and said, “I want to talk to any eye-witnesses.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ryan muttered. Abby Maitland clearly wasn’t in the least bit over-awed by men with guns, which was fortunate in the circumstances.

Ryan gestured to Kermit to bring over a blond-haired man who looked half-frozen, hands thrust deeply into the pockets of his jacket and shoulders hunched. Ryan remembered him from the batch of new arrivals the previous week. The man shared a cell with Stephen Hart, whose rape Jackson had been instrumental in covering up.

If the man was surprised to find himself being quizzed by a diminutive woman half his age, he did a good job of covering it up, answering Abby’s questions concisely and accurately. The story that emerged corroborated the picture Ryan had gleaned from his discussion with Sergeant Taylor, with the additional detail that the animal had been covered with brindled fur, a mix of dark brown and a lighter, more russet colour.

“So, we’re looking for something about the size and shape of a tiger with a long muzzle, maybe more like a wolf,” Ryan said, when Abby had brought her game of 20 Questions to a close.

“With hooves,” Abby said calmly, staring at the ground.

Ryan’s eyebrows shot up.

“Told you it didn’t make sense, boss,” Finn commented.

“Hooves?” The man – Cutter, if Ryan remembered correctly – went down on his knees in the mud to examine the prints more closely. “Are you sure these were made by the same animal?”

“Unless something the same size and weight has been romping around here in the last hour without anyone noticing, yes,” Finn told him. “We followed the tracks for about 200 metres, but the mist was getting too thick and the ground is bloody boggy. It’s gone right through a section of fence, ripping the posts straight out of the ground, but it starts to get indistinct further up.”

“You need Stephen for this. He can follow anything anywhere,” Cutter told them. “I’ve seen him track a wounded animal through conditions even worse than this. If it’s out there, he can find it.” He stared down at the prints again and muttered, “Hooves. But that can’t be right. It’s impossible.”

“Killer mutant sheep?” Finn suggested.

“Mesonychids. Hoofed predators,” Cutter countered, still staring down at the ground.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Ryan demanded. Cutter’s words made no sense to him, but from the look on Abby Maitland’s face, they clearly meant more to her.

The woman stared up at Cutter. “That’s ridiculous.”

Cutter shrugged. “I didn’t say it made sense. But the last time I saw a set of tracks that looked anything like that, they were behind glass in a museum.”

Ryan took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, doing his best to force down his irritation with the man.

“Bring Connor Temple over here,” Cutter said suddenly, in the tone of a man who was used to giving instructions and having other people jump to do his bidding. “Young lad, dark hair, looks like a drowned rat at the moment,” he added, by way of clarification. “He needs to see this. The lad’s got an encyclopaedic memory for this sort of thing.”

“And what sort of thing is that?” Ryan demanded. Regardless of the fact that he was obviously freezing cold, Cutter was looking more animated than anyone who had been out there in foul conditions and had just survived a large animal attack had any right to be.

“If I told you it was something related to whales you wouldn’t believe me, would you?”

“It’s too fucking cold for jokes,” Ryan countered.

“Bring Connor over here. Just trust me for a minute. What harm can it do?”

“We could all get even colder,” Finn said in the resigned tone of voice of someone who could see the inevitable approaching at a rate of knots.

“Do it,” Abby Maitland snapped. “I want to hear what he has to say.” She looked up at the blond-haired man and said, “You’re Professor Nick Cutter, aren’t you? I didn’t recognise you at first. I wanted to enrol on your course but I couldn’t afford the fees and then the zoo offered me a job.” She held her hand out and Cutter shook it. “I was sorry when I heard you’d been tried and convicted.”

“Not half as sorry as I was, lass,” Cutter said. “But right now you’re better off out of it. Evolutionary zoology doesn’t open many doors right now, or at least the evolutionary bit doesn’t.”

Ryan raised his arm to flag down one of the minibuses that were about to leave the quarry. “He isn’t going to thank you for keeping him out in this cold, but it’s your call,” he remarked. “Kermit, get the lad off the bus. We may as well humour the professor.”

Cutter had been right; the lad did look like a drowned rat. His greasy dark hair was plastered to his head and he was shaking with cold. They were going to have to make this quick before they ended up having to treat him for hypothermia.

“Listen to this description and tell me what you think,” Cutter said, barely suppressing the excitement in his voice. “About two metres tall, brindled fur, jaws capable of crushing flesh and bone, and teeth able to rip and tear.”

Connor looked at Cutter, his face white and pinched. “Sounds like something off a Cryptozoology website, Professor.”

“With hooves,” Cutter added, waving his hand at the mess on the ground.

Connor’s eyes widened. “You’re not joking, are you?”

“As the captain has just informed me, lad, it’s too fucking cold for jokes.”

“My guess would be Andrewsarchus,” Connor said, still staring at the prints. “Or maybe an Arctocyon, but the Andrewsarchus was probably bigger, so I’d go for one of them. I was never convinced by Spaulding trying to reclassify them. They were still under mesonychids in my database.” He gaped at Cutter like a kid who had just seen Father Christmas. “This is real, isn’t it? But how the hell has it managed to survive on Dartmoor for 36 million years?”

Cutter sighed. “Considering that Dartmoor didn’t even exist 36 million years ago, I can safely say that I have absolutely no bloody idea.” A swift grin lit his face and he added, “But that’s all bollocks, remember. After all, the earth was only created 6,000 years ago, so all of this is just nonsense.”

“We’ll just stick to the mutant killer sheep theory, shall we?” Ryan said. “It’s all right for you, Professor, but I’m the one who’s going to have to explain all this to the governor.”

“Could be worse, boss,” Finn said cheerfully. “Ms Lewis is going to have to explain it to the press.”

“Make sure that no one gets anywhere near these tracks,” Ryan ordered. “If the professor’s friend is as good as he’s making out, I want him to see these.”

But first, he had to clear the quarry and secure the scene. Reporting to the governor would have to stand in line with everything else he had to do.


	14. Chapter 14

Lester already looked like a man with a bad headache and Ryan knew perfectly well that the report he’d just delivered hadn’t done anything to improve the governor’s day.

“Hooves?” The note of incredulity in Lester’s voice reminded Ryan of Lady Bracknell’s utterance on the subject of handbags. Ryan’s grandmother had done a very passable impression of Dame Edith Evans in that role and Lester could probably have run her a close second.

“Hooves,” Ryan agreed. “Miss Maitland was quite adamant about that and so was Professor Cutter.”

“There’s a killer pony on the loose? The press must be loving that idea.”

Ryan failed to suppress a grin. “That’s near enough what Finn said, sir, except he blamed it on mutant sheep.”

The comparison with Finn made Lester look even more pained. “What sort of animal leaves tracks like that, Ryan? There has to be a rational explanation for what’s happened and I really don’t believe it involves killer sheep or murderous ponies.”

“They’ve got the wrong sort of teeth anyway,” Ryan said, unable to resist pushing his luck just a little bit further. “Jackson wasn’t disembowelled by a herbivore.”

To his surprise, a flash of amusement danced in Lester’s sharp eyes. “And I’m given to understand that sheep have no gag reflex, but I very much doubt that is of any relevance either.”

“We’d have to ask Finn about that,” Ryan commented. “He knows a thing or two about sheep.”

“And apparently so does our Professor Cutter, if what you tell me is to be believed,” Lester said, placing ironic emphasis on the word Professor. “I think it’s time I had another word with our recalcitrant academic.” He pressed a button on the intercom on his desk. “Lorraine, please arrange for Nicholas Cutter to be brought to my office. I imagine he is to be found in the shower block.”

“Worth bringing the lad in as well, sir,” Ryan suggested.

“Have Connor Temple brought up here with him,” Lester added, demonstrating the eidetic memory for prisoner’s names that never failed to impress Ryan. “In fact, let’s throw a party and invite Stephen Hart as well.”

Ryan had mentioned Cutter’s comments on the subject of Hart’s tracking abilities, but he hadn’t expected Lester to evince any interest in that.

“I gather Hart has worked closely with Cutter for a number of years,” Lester commented. “Cutter either has a taste for pretty boys or the man is academically sound as well as decorative. Such a shame they chose to cling to heretical beliefs,” he added, his eyes flicking up to Ryan’s face to gauge his reaction.

Ryan nodded. He had a strong suspicion that Lester was no more religious than he was, but he had no intention of putting himself at risk by admitting that. The jails were already overcrowded with people who wouldn’t recant their belief in evolution and Ryan had no wish to swell the ranks of those he’d been charged with keeping in order.

It took ten minutes for Lester’s secretary to round up the three prisoners and have them brought up to the governor’s office. During that time Lester received a telephone call from Ditzy at the hospital telling him that Jackson had died in the operating theatre. Ryan hadn’t liked the man but he knew that the dead guard had a wife and three children. After that call, silence settled over them like a shroud.

The sound of footsteps in the corridor alerted Ryan to the approach of the prisoners and their guard. At a nod from Lester, he opened the door. Nodding to the guard, Ryan said, “I’ll make sure they get back to their cell afterward.”

The three men were dressed in identical orange boiler suits and from the white, pinched look on Connor Temple’s face, the lad hadn’t warmed up much. Cutter’s hair stood up in damp spikes and Ryan caught the sharp smell of prison soap. A lukewarm shower obviously hadn’t done much to rid either of the men of the chill of the moor.

Stephen Hart, who had been escorted in by a guard at the same time as the others, looked wary, obviously wondering why he’d been dragged out of his cell for a meeting in the governor’s office. Ryan gave the man what he hoped was a reassuring look. It was met by a bland stare from two of the bluest eyes he’d ever seen.

Lester looked up from the papers on his desk and said, “I hear you have some interesting theories about the creature, Cutter. Do enlighten me. I gather we have a cross between a whale and a sheep rampaging around the moor.”

“That’s not what I said,” Cutter said, his voice and expression equally truculent. “I said they were related to whales.”

“And what is a relation of whales doing in the middle of Dartmoor killing my guards?”

Ryan watched as a flicker of emotion crossed Stephen Hart’s usually impassive face. He very much doubted Hart would shed any tears over the man who had been next in line for a piece of his arse.

“Your guess is as good as mine on that score,” Cutter said.

Lester frowned but took a different tack. “Captain Ryan said you made some wild claims as to what the animal might be. Would you care to enlighten me?”

“Not if it means I have to spend any longer in this place,” Cutter countered.

Lester rolled his eyes. “All right. Point taken. You may speak freely without fear of the consequences. It’ll be our little secret.”

“Andrewsarchus,” Cutter said. “Discovered in 1923 in the Gobi Desert and named after Roy Chapman Andrews. There’s some argument about its exact classification but basically, it’s a middle Eocene carnivore. That means it lived somewhere between 55 and 37 million years ago.” Cutter stopped and stared challengingly at Lester as though he expected the man to argue with him. It was no doubt the same attitude that had ended up with Cutter taking an extended holiday at Her Majesty’s expense.

Lester waved one hand airily. “Yes, Professor. We’ll gloss over your outrageous claims about the antiquity of God’s green earth for the moment, shall we? Do continue with your flight of fantasy…”

“It was quite probably the largest mammalian land carnivore that ever lived,” Connor Temple broke in excitedly. “Its skull was nearly a metre long and two-thirds of a metre wide.” Cutter’s student made some wild gestures with his hands, reminding Ryan of a fisherman describing the size of the one that got away. When Lester raised an eyebrow, Connor added, “That’s almost twice the size of a grizzly bear.”

“No wonder they didn’t want two of them on the Ark,” Lester commented dryly. “So, you believe we have an antediluvian predator running around Dartmoor?”

“Yes,” Cutter said. “I can’t think of anything else that size with hooves.”

“Ah yes, I was forgetting the hooves. And how do you explain its survival over the past…” Lester hesitated pointedly then ended with the words, “Six thousand years.”

Cutter rolled his eyes in a gesture almost identical to the one Lester had treated him to a few minutes ago. “Can we just cut the crap for the moment?”

Lester sighed. “Cutter, you really have no idea how to play the game, have you? I’m looking for an explanation, so help me out here, otherwise you can kick your heels in the cell again for all I care.”

At Cutter’s side, Connor shivered and thrust his hands deeper into his pockets.

“It’s warmer in here than in your cell,” Ryan pointed out.

“That’s not bloody difficult,” Cutter muttered. “As I told Captain Ryan in the quarry, I have absolutely no idea how something known only from a single fossil found in Mongolia has ended up alive and well and causing a headache for you and the Dartmoor Tourist Board. We might know more when that wee lassie from the zoo has had a chance to get some DNA tests done on the hairs that she took away with her.”

“That might tell us what it is,” Lester said. “But not how it ended up here and now. I really can’t believe that a predator of that sort of size has gone unnoticed. I grant you that the area isn’t exactly Hyde Park, but even I know it’s not big enough to support a pack of predators for that long unnoticed.”

“There’s still a possibility that mammoths have survived in Siberia,” Connor said, enthusiasm getting the better of him again. “And then there’s the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot…”

“Spare me that sort of idiocy,” Lester snapped. “What are the chances of some maniac doing genetic experiments?”

“What, you mean like in Jurassic Park?” Connor grinned, totally unabashed by Lester’s irritation. “There’s only one skull. I doubt anyone has managed to get viable DNA from that.”

“You’re still not providing me with an explanation I can sell to my superiors, gentlemen.”

“How very remiss of us,” Cutter said. “Do you mean we’re not going to get time off for good behaviour?”

“Not at this rate,” Lester retorted. He switched his gaze to Stephen Hart. “I’m told you have some skill as a tracker.”

Hart nodded but said nothing.

“In that case you can get some healthy outdoor exercise. Ryan, I want you to accompany Hart onto the moor. We can’t have that wretched thing running around ripping people to shreds. I want it found and I want it found before it does any more damage. Do I make myself clear?”

It was Ryan’s turn to nod.

“And we’ll have no talk outside this room about what the wretched creature might or might not be. Understood?” Lester swept his eyes across the three men lined up in front if his desk. When no one acknowledged his words, the governor brought his hand down sharply on the mahogany desk the noise echoing sharply around the room. “If I hear one word being spoken out of turn, you’ll all find yourselves with new cell mates. I imagine Gordie Fraser would be quite happy to make Mr Temple’s acquaintance.” Lester waved his hand in the direction of the door. “Dismissed. Ryan, I shall expect significant progress on this matter in the very near future. I appreciate that it is now too late in the day for Hart to emulate the Last of the Mohicans but I shall expect him out on the moor at first light tomorrow. Until then, all outside work parties are suspended and make sure no one gets near those tracks before Hart gets to see them.”

“Yes, sir.” Ryan knew Lester well enough to be certain that his threats were only for show. For all his irascible manner, the governor was scrupulously fair in his treatment of the prisoners and he had been disgusted by what he had heard from Ryan of Hart’s rape. Evidence was being gathered on Gordie Fraser’s activities and the Glaswegian criminal would no doubt very shortly find himself on the receiving end of Lester’s discipline. As would several of the guards, but for the moment they were too under-staffed for any effective crackdown on the many abuses being uncovered by the soldiers.

And for now, they had rather more pressing matters to attend to.


	15. Chapter 15

The drive from the prison to the quarry took no more than ten minutes, even at a slower speed than Ryan’s efforts behind the wheel of the Range Rover the previous day. Stephen Hart was in the back seat, guarded by Finn. Jenny Lewis had arranged for Ryan to meet Abby Maitland at the quarry. Despite the efforts of the local police to keep the press and other sightseers away from the scene, Ryan wasn’t surprised to see signs of considerable activity outside the quarry gates, but at least no one had gone beyond the blue and white crime scene tape up onto the moor itself.

Drinks bottles, crisp packets and other detritus were strewn around outside the gates making the place look like a very messy picnic site. A bright yellow Mini pulled up next to Ryan’s vehicle. Abby Maitland clearly believed in being prompt. Ryan locked the gates behind them and Finn jumped out, his rifle slung over his shoulder. Stephen Hart followed him, his wrists and ankles shackled by two lengths of chain. Finn pulled an even longer chain out of his pocket and looked enquiringly at Ryan.

Ryan ignored the unspoken question for a moment and turned his attention to Cutter’s former assistant. Before they’d left the prison, Ryan had insisted on Hart being equipped with suitable clothing for the trip onto the moor. He was now wearing a pair of borrowed black trousers, leather boots and walking socks as well as a fleece sweater over a long sleeved teeshirt. A thick windproof jacket would keep out the biting wind and the bright yellow reflective strips sewn onto the material would be visible at quite a distance. Ryan very much doubted the man presented an escape risk. From what he had read in Hart’s file the night before, he was too loyal to Cutter to do a runner.

“Are you prepared to give me your word that you won’t try to escape?” he asked.

Hart met his eyes unflinchingly. “Yes.”

Ryan pulled his keys out of a pocket and unlocked the shackles on Hart’s wrists and ankles then tossed them on the back seat of the Range Rover. “Just so you know, I have full authority to shoot to kill if you’re lying to me.”

“I’m not.”

Ryan nodded and turned his attention to Abby Maitland who had watched their exchange without saying a word. “Miss Maitland, this is Stephen Hart. He used to work with Cutter. He’s going to help us track the creature.”

“Call me Abby,” she said, holding out her hand to Hart. “We met briefly a few years ago at a conference but I don’t suppose you remember.”

He shook her hand, a smile on his handsome face. “Portsmouth. The year before this madness started. Cutter was talking about the evolution of whales.”

She nodded, looking pleased. “I followed your trial in the news.” She glanced at Ryan without much liking, clearly seeing him as an extension of the regime that had put the professor and his assistants behind bars.

“I don’t make the laws,” he said. Before either of them could reply, he waved his hand at a patch of mud ringed by blue and white scene of crime tape. “Shall we get on with what we came for?”

Hart made his way over to the muddy area, keeping his intense blue eyes trained on the ground. He went down on one knee and examined the tracks closely. After a few minutes, he looked up. “Definitely hooves. Cutter’s right. There’s nothing alive today that would leave a print like this.”

“Don’t think whatever made that print was dead,” Finn commented cheerfully.

Hart stood up. “Everyone stay behind me, preferably a couple of metres. I don’t want any tracks being obliterated by accident if it turns back on itself.” Without waiting for an answer he moved off, graceful despite the heavy clothing. The man appeared to have recovered well from the assault and was clearly confident of his abilities.

Ryan hung back, letting both Finn and Abby Maitland go in front of him. There was no point in bringing in someone for their expertise and then getting in their way.

Hart did his job silently, moving easily and surprisingly quickly across the rock-strewn quarry floor. He paused a couple of times on the slope that led up towards the moor but each time moved off as confidently as before. The fence that had once encircled the quarry was now broken down and overgrown with grass and a tangle of stunted bushes. Hart went down on one knee and plucked a clump of dark hair off a strand of rusty barbed wire. Without speaking, he handed it to Abby, his eyebrows raised in enquiry.

She produced a small zip-lock plastic bag from her pocket, examined the hair and then sealed the bag. “It looks a match for what we found yesterday,” she confirmed. “I’m still waiting for the analysis, but it’s not from a sheep, I can tell you that much.”

“Another great theory bites the dust.” Finn grinned. He pointed up the slope in the direction of the trail they’d been following. “I went about another 100 metres then it got to the stage where we could hardly see our hands in front of our faces.” He thrust his hands deep in his pockets and looked around at the bleak moorland stretching up the slope in front of them. “It’ll be coming down again within the hour.”

Rob Finn had been brought up on Dartmoor and Ryan didn’t doubt for an instant that he was right, although from what Ryan had seen the area only appeared to have two types of weather conditions: crap and crappier. The bitter wind cut straight to the bone and the grey sky was the same colour as the stones beneath his feet. He’d probably worked in more depressing places, but off hand it was hard to think of any.

Hart pulled up the collar of his borrowed jacket and moved off again. Ryan was buggered if he could see what sort of trail the man was following, but Hart seemed to know his business. He led them in more or less a straight line up onto the bleak moorland above the quarry, travelling roughly north-west. Considering they were on a slope, the ground was still surprisingly boggy in places and Ryan knew it wouldn’t be long before they all had wet feet. The bloody place bore an unpleasant resemblance to the Brecon Beacons, somewhere Ryan had spent more days – and nights – than he cared to remember. From the look on Finn’s face, he was thinking the same thing.

They continued upwards, crossing frequent patches of rocky ground. A low thorny bush yielded a couple of hairs, leaving Ryan wondering how the hell Hart had managed to spot them. They were bagged up and pocketed by Abby. At one point, Hart stopped and cast around in a wide circle before picking up the trail again and moving off. On a couple of occasions he consulted both Finn and Abby, leaving Ryan standing around feeling like a spare prick at a wedding.

The combat shotgun was a comforting weight in Ryan’s hands. He normally disliked handling weapons wearing gloves, but he was prepared to make an exception for the current conditions on the moor. The supple black leather gloves were better than having his fingers go numb from the cold. He glanced around and realised that as predicted, the mist was starting to draw in again, casting a grey pall over the desolate landscape.

Stephen Hart stuck his hands deeper into his pockets and moved on. Try as he might, Ryan failed to spot anything more than the occasional print, but even then, some of the ones he could make out could just as easily have been left by a sheep or a pony. After nearly an hour, in which Ryan reckoned they’d travelled something like a kilometre and a half, Hart suddenly dropped to one knee and muttered, “Oh you beauty…”

Finn looked over his shoulder and a wide grin spread over his face. At their side, Abby seemed equally pleased. Ryan stepped up beside them and looked to see what was causing the rapt impressions. A large pile of dung nestled on the short grass. Abby pulled a wooden spatula from her pocket and a large plastic bag and handed them to Hart who poked at the mess on the ground, bending down to sniff it.

“Well, that didn’t come out of a herbivore,” he remarked.

Ryan wrinkled his nose in disgust and got a grin in return.

Hart quickly bagged up some of the dung and it disappeared into one of Abby’s capacious pockets as well.

“I’ll check it out back at the zoo,” she commented. “But it looks pretty much like the stuff the lions produce. We’ve got a little old lady in the village who buys it by the bucket load. She swears it keeps the neighbour’s cats away from her flowerbeds.” In response to Ryan’s look of amazement, she added, “Zoo poo. Trust me, Captain Ryan, people pay good money for it.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Ryan said, well aware of the fact that he’d just done his tough guy image no good at all. Even Finn was grinning widely.

Abby stared up at him, mischief dancing in her eyes. “You can learn a lot from dung, Captain.”

“Yes, miss. If you and Hart have stopped bonding over a pile of crap, maybe we can see where this trail leads?”

“Up this godforsaken hillside, by the look of it,” said Hart, standing up and brushing the mud off his knees. He set off again, covering the ground easily with his long legs, stopping every now and again to check for more prints.

The mist had settled around them like a wet, grey blanket but Hart was still intent on the stony ground at his feet. He led them in a straight line up the hill, towards one of the rocky tors for which Dartmoor was famous. Ryan had done some running in the area on his days off, but he was unfamiliar with this part of the barren landscape. When the stones finally gave way again to softer ground, Ryan caught a glimpse of the tracks Hart was following. The hoof prints stood out clearly on the damp ground, even after nearly 20 hours. The tracker was moving faster now, despite the mist and for a moment, Ryan more than half-expected to see the huge beast whose trail they were following looming up ahead of them, powerful jaws agape. He gripped his Mossberg 590 a little harder. The moor was eerie enough, without him giving into flights of fancy.

Without warning, Hart came to a halt, staring down at the damp earth. He made a curt gesture with his hand that told them, without the need for words, to stay well back. The tracker took a pace to the right and stared down at the dark earth. Ryan could see the frown deepening on Hart’s face as he started, slowly and methodically, to work his way out in an ever-widening circle, his eyes riveted to the ground. After nearly ten minutes, he worked his way back to his starting point, looking as puzzled as Ryan felt.

“The tracks just stop.” The disconcertingly blue eyes held frustration and something very close to disbelief. In response to Finn’s raised eyebrows, Hart gestured at the ground. “Be my bloody guest. I can’t pick up a sodding thing.”

For the next 15 minutes, Ryan watched as Finn and Abby Maitland both quartered the ground over a 50 metre radius until they finally admitted defeat as well. Ryan didn’t profess to have any skills even remotely approaching their expertise but even he had to admit that if a creature the size of the one they’d been following had set foot – or hoof – on the soft ground, they should have been able to see some signs. Ryan could understand it if they’d lost the beast’s trail on the stony ground further down the slope, but not here, where even their own prints stood out like sore thumbs.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Ryan said when, by mutual assent, they had called a halt to the search and were standing there, staring down at the last visible hoof prints.

Abby pulled her mobile phone out of a pocket and started to take photographs of the end of the trail.

“The governor isn’t going to be a happy bunny,” Finn remarked.

Ryan stared down at the hoof prints. It was all right for Finn, he wasn’t going to be the one who would have to break the news that apart from a few tufts of fur and a bag of shit, they were coming back empty-handed.

At exactly that moment, Ryan’s mobile phone started to ring. A quick glance at the display showed that the news of their lack of success was going to end up being broken rather sooner than he’d anticipated.


	16. Chapter 16

Lester stared out of the car window at the deeply unappealing combination of mist and rain. To put it politely, the weather was bloody awful, had been all month and looked like continuing the same way. It was hardly surprising that Dartmoor Prison had one of the highest turnovers of senior management in the country. No one wanted to stay long and he didn’t blame them.

“Sorry about the time this is going to take, Sir James,” his driver commented, his eyes on the road. “We’re going to be in the mist the whole way, by the look of it.”

“That’s not your fault, George,” Lester said mildly. The car was already streaking along narrow roads and between high hedges at a speed slightly outside Lester’s comfort zone, so he wasn’t going to be concerned by anything that slowed them down.

The meeting with one of the Assistant Chief Constables in Exeter had gone as well as could be expected. Alison Heggarty was a brisk, no-nonsense woman, keen to keep a very firm lid on some of the wilder tales already circulating in the press, despite Jenny Lewis’ best efforts at containment. She’d had a bellyful of claims about the Beast of Bodmin over the years and had no intention of allowing a similar situation to escalate on Dartmoor.

Some farmers, worried for their stock had already demanded police marksmen on the ground, although Lester wasn’t quite sure what that would achieve if they couldn’t see more than a couple of feet ahead of them. Heggarty had made it clear she had no intention of blowing a very sizeable hole in her already over-stretched budget by deploying Armed Response Units. As far as she was concerned, Lester would have to make his own arrangements for the protection of the prisoners under his jurisdiction while they paid their debt to society. As she’d somewhat acerbically pointed out, he had enough men with guns at his disposal, so she certainly wasn’t going to lend him any more. He’d had little choice but to agree. He knew an immovable force when he met one.

Lester was under pressure from the Prison Service to ensure that a sentence with hard labour meant exactly what it said, and so, despite the fact that it was far more efficient to crush road stone by mechanical means, prisoners from Dartmoor still had to labour in the quarries breaking rocks. It suited the belief of the current crop of politicians that suffering was redemptive, a theory that Lester had never subscribed to, although he was careful to keep his views to himself. He was just glad that they hadn’t foisted treadmills onto him as a means of keeping the prisoners occupied, but he had a feeling it would be only a matter of time before some bright spark came up with the idea. Lester had to admit that even he’d been surprised by the alacrity that had greeted his idea of the reintroduction of prison ships.

But the idea of continuing to allow prisoners onto the moor in work parties had already received vigorous opposition from Captain Ryan. The soldier had already expressed his views in no uncertain terms about the inadvisability of sending men onto the moor after the attacks on the road crew and on the workers at the quarry. Lester glanced out of the windows at the grey mist blanketing the moor and did his best to suppress a shudder at the thought of a creature that appeared to have the ability to vanish into thin air. Receiving that piece of news from Ryan when Lester had phoned him to demand an update before his meeting with Alison Heggarty had done little for his peace of mind. There were times when Lester wished his father had been less diligent about ensuring he’d read some of Conan Doyle’s work as a child. The Hound of the bloody Baskervilles had clearly scarred him for life.

The hedges eventually gave way to open moorland and Lester relaxed slightly. He loathed the narrow lanes that passed for classified roads in this part of the country. Fortunately, even on the more open roads on top of the moor, George Baker kept his speed moderate. The driver knew the routes on and off the moor like the back of his hand, but the numerous sheep and ponies that roamed freely on the short grass were an additional hazard and Lester had made his views on paying compensation for damaged stock quite plain.

“This is getting ruddy daft.”

From his seat in the back of the black Mercedes, Lester heard his driver’s muttered words and was inclined to agree. The rain was teeming down the windscreen as though unseen hands were hurling bucket after bucket of water straight at the glass.

“Pull over, George,” Lester told him. “It can’t stay like this for much longer.” He looked at his watch. All he was in danger of missing was a meeting with Oliver Leek and Jenny Lewis, and that could easily be rescheduled. It certainly wasn’t worth risking life and limb for.

George Baker, normally a stubborn man where driving was concerned, just grunted something unintelligible under his breath and, as soon as he could, pulled over into one of the small parking areas that abounded on the moor. The gravel chippings that covered the dark ground had no doubt been quarried and crushed by some of his own prisoners. George left the engine running while the windscreen wipers continued to fight a losing battle with the rain. Lester leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment, but the nagging sense of unease that had descended on him as the mist had covered the moor contrived to prevent him snatching a moment or two of well-earned rest.

“What the buggerin’ ‘ell’s that?” George muttered, peering out of the driver’s side window.

Lester followed his gaze and caught a glimpse of a flash of light in the mist. It looked like the beam of a torch shining through the rain and the grey mist. His first thought was that a walker had got lost on the moor but was now finding their way to the safety of the road. They hadn’t passed any parked cars for some distance, and the weather seemed to have put off even the most ardent of ‘beast spotters’. Dartmoor in this weather wasn’t somewhere he’d choose for recreation, but there was no accounting for taste.

A few minutes later, they were still catching glimpses of light from amidst the mist, but the walker didn’t seem to have come any closer to them.

“Walkin’ in bleedin’ circles,” George pronounced.

“Perhaps a blast on the horn would alert them to how close they are to the road?” Lester suggested. He had no particular desire to involve himself in someone else’s predicament, especially if it would involve soaking wet clothing and muddy boots inside his Mercedes, but common decency dictated that they needed to at least make some attempt to make contact.

The sound of the horn was loud inside the car, and outside, even muffled by the mist, a lost walker couldn’t have failed to hear the noise. George blasted the horn four more times as they both watched for any change in the direction of the lights. As the mist swirled around them, Lester came to the conclusion that the position of the light didn’t appear to have moved at all, although at one point, through a slight break in the low cloud, he thought he had seen a larger spread of silver than was likely to be coming from a torch beam. A shiver ran between his shoulder blades. There was something unnatural about the light and Lester didn’t like anything he didn’t understand.

“Drive on, George,” he said calmly.

His driver cast him a sidelong look, but didn’t argue. He slipped the car into first gear and started to pull back out onto the road. Lester continued to stare into the mist, watching as it moved in lazy swirls as the rain continued to hammer noisily down onto the car. He caught sight of a heavy shape some distance way… probably one of the thick-set Dartmoor ponies that roamed the moor in large numbers. As he watched, it became clear that the same was now moving towards them at a run.

“George, there’s something coming towards us!” Lester knew his voice was sharp with concern and didn’t even attempt to conceal his feelings.

His driver glanced over his shoulder, swore violently and stamped his foot on the accelerator. As the car surged forward, a large shape burst out of the mist and slammed into the back of the Mercedes, rocking it on its suspension and causing the car to slew across the road and clip one of the marker stones on the verge. George wrestled with the wheel and skidded back onto the road, the rear wheels sliding in the soft back earth. A second thump accompanied by the sound of scraping metal made it known that they weren’t out of trouble yet.

Lester twisted around in his seat, doing his best to see what the hell was attacking them, as it certainly wasn’t a pony or a sheep, despite the various claims from one of Ryan’s men to the existence of mutant killer sheep. The rain was still teeming down, and their attacker seemed to have ripped off the rear windscreen wiper, so that made getting a good look at their pursuer difficult. But from what Lester could see, the beast fitted the description that Ryan and Cutter had put together between them. The creature was large, even more so than the lions in London Zoo, and with a more massive head, but that was really all he could make out as George Baker did his best to keep the car on the road while accelerating as fast as he could in appalling visibility.

The sudden blare of another horn made Lester’s stomach lurch uncomfortably, as a car, being driven far too fast for the conditions came the other way, swerving past them. For a moment, Lester thought George had lost control, but somehow the man managed to skilfully slip the car into a lower gear, gain more traction and accelerate out of trouble.

From what Lester could see, the other vehicle – white and being driven far too fast for the conditions – had already sped off across the open expanse of moor, swallowed up in the mist, probably unaware of what had happened in its wake.

In the middle of the road, the creature opened its jaws wide and roared after them in a mixture of rage and frustration, before it turned and loped away uphill. Lester caught a final glimpse of flickering light before the mist drew in around them like a shroud.

Fifteen minutes later, the damaged Mercedes swept in through the outer gateway of the prison and on past the main gates, already drawn back to allow them into the inner courtyard. It was only when the huge wooden gates had swung closed behind them that Lester felt able to breathe easily. The imposing figure of Captain Ryan walking briskly over to the car, armed to the teeth as usual, allowed him to relax slightly further. He’d managed to get a brief call through to the captain before the mobile signal had been lost. He had countermanded any attempt to send men onto the moor until the weather conditions improved, which, from the look of the granite grey clouds hanging low about the prison, wouldn’t be for some while.

He opened the door of the car and stared ruefully at the damage. Fortunately it wasn’t his own vehicle. The rocks at the side of the road, positioned to prevent tourists parking willy-nilly on the verges had left deep gouges in the metal and something had badly crumpled the passenger side rear wing. Whatever the beast had been, it had been strong enough and heavy enough to do considerable damage to the rear of the car. A shudder ran through Lester as he thought about what might have been if George hadn’t managed to keep the Mercedes on the road.

His driver stared mordantly at the damage.

“Don’t worry, George, it won’t be coming out of your wages,” Lester said as lightly as he could manage.

Ryan walked around the car, inspecting the damage. He went down on one knee at the rear of the car and plucked something from the buckled bumper before stowing it in a small plastic bag and slipping that into his pocket. In response to Lester’s raised eyebrows, he said, “Russet hair. Looks like what we picked up at the quarry.”

Lester kept his expression neutral. He wasn’t surprised. Their attacker had fitted the description Cutter had given. “I’ll see you in one hour, Captain. Please get this to our zoo expert and ask her to run a comparison on the hair.”

Ryan nodded. The soldier was a man of few words.

Even the walk across the courtyard was enough to soak Lester to the skin. Once in the privacy of his own rooms, he pulled off his damp clothes and wrapped himself in a thick dressing-gown. 4pm was somewhat early to take refuge in alcohol, but on this occasion, he was prepared to make an exception. It wasn’t every day that he nearly fell victim to something that should have been long, long dead.

And if his masters in government were privy to the thoughts that were going through his head as he downed a large, neat Scotch in three mouthfuls, Cutter and his assistants wouldn’t be the only ones serving five years hard labour for the crime of heresy.


	17. Chapter 17

Nick turned over on the narrow bunk, trying not to disturb any of his cell-mates. If he’d learned one thing in the short time he’d spent as a guest of Her Majesty, it was that sleep was prized above anything in prison, even above booze, fags, drugs and sex.

Even in ordinary conditions, he’d been told that people had been attacked for inadvertently disturbing someone’s sleep, and this was very definitely not the best of times. The prison was a festering mess of tensions on all sides. Prisoners had been killed and others had been injured, guards had died but there had been no explanation. Or at least no explanation that Sir James Lester was prepared to allow anyone to repeat in public, and feelings were running high on all sides. Theories ranged from the idea that the Beast of Bodmin had packed its spotted hanky and moved to Dartmoor, to suspicions that the Ministry of Defence were genetically engineering attack dogs for use in prisons and that one had escaped.

The reality, if reality it was, was even stranger, and Nick could see no explanation – no matter how far-fetched – for the appearance of a creature from 36 million years ago in the middle of the English countryside. But even that seemed somehow more credible than the alternatives.

Free association had been curtailed early that evening after a rash of fights on one of the other wings, and the lights in the cells had been turned out at the early hour of eight o’clock. The effect was rather like throwing a blanket over a parrot’s cage. After some initial cat-calling and rattling of tin mugs on the doors, the inmates had largely settled down. The darkness seemed to inhibit conversation and even the normally garrulous Danny Quinn had simply stretched out his lanky form on the top bunk, his hands behind his head, and done his best to get some sleep.

The changes in the breathing of those around him eventually told Nick that he was the only one still awake. On the top bunk opposite him, the sound of quiet snoring indicated that Danny had finally found some relief from the rigours and tedium of prison life. Connor signalled his own rest with a series of snorts and snuffles that Nick had become more familiar with than he’d ever wanted to be. The only quiet sleeper – and Nick could testify to that from many weeks sharing a tent with him – was Stephen.

Judging the passage of time in the dark was not easy. From the growing pressure in his bladder, Nick guessed that several hours had passed. He’d listened to the rain lashing against the small, high window in the cell, but eventually, that had slackened and finally died away altogether and the pitch darkness had gradually given way to a pale, watery moonlight. The fullness of Nick’s bladder had now reached the stage that he could no longer ignore it, and he knew perfectly well that he had no prospect of sleep until it had been relieved.

Nick threw back the thin, scratchy blanket and moved through the darkness of the cramped cell to the stainless steel toilet in the corner of the room. Fortunately, pissing in the presence of other men wasn’t a problem in itself, although Nick still found attending to other calls of nature in such circumstances to be difficult, even though prison etiquette was simply to pretend nothing was happening. He shook himself off and moved away from the toilet. Another unwritten prison rule was that if all you’d done was take a leak, you didn’t flush. Everyone was agreed on the fact that the pervasive smell of piss in the morning was preferable to being woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of the toilet flush, accompanied by the death-rattle of water into the antiquated pipes.

He stood in the middle of the room, flanked by bunks on either side, and stared up at the silver moonlight. A sudden yearning to see the outside world swept over Nick in an irresistible wave of longing.

“Come up here,” Stephen said quietly. “The clouds have gone and you’ll be able to see the stars.”

The fact that the assistant who’d been closer to him than his own skin for many years had woken up knowing exactly what was on his mind didn’t surprise Nick in the slightest. Without replying, Nick stepped up onto his own bunk and, using the upper bunk to steady himself while the bank of four wooden cupboards took his weight, he was able to balance quite comfortably and look out of the window. Stephen was right, he could see the stars looking like pinpricks of bright light driven through a black silk cloth.

Nick smiled. The sheer vastness of the night sky was enough to remind him of the world that lay outside the granite walls of Dartmoor prison. A world of wind, rain and occasionally even sun. The high walls of the exercise yard prevented the feel of the wind on your face, but now, looking over them and across the darkness of the moor, he could remember a life outside these walls.

As he watched, another light suddenly popped into being, larger than the others and closer to ground level. Nick blinked, wondering if his eyes were playing him false. A moment later, the night gave birth to another giant Will o’ the Wisp, dancing above one of the grey, granite tors.

“High Tor,” Stephen murmured.

Nick glanced at him and saw a familiar, intense look on Stephen’s face as he gazed out into the night as well. “You see it too?”

Stephen chuckled. “Of course I see it, you idiot. Did you think you were hallucinating?”

“How many lights are there tonight?” asked Danny Quinn, from the top of the bunk opposite.

As the ex-copper spoke, Nick realised that he hadn’t heard the man snore since he’d got up to answer the dictates of his bladder.

“Two. Have you seen them before?”

“Twice,” Danny replied. “Once last night, and once the night before the attack on the quarry. One the first time, two the second time. There might have been some at other times, but I have occasionally managed to get some sleep in this fucking place.”

“Wass goin’on?” mumbled Connor from the bottom bunk.

At the mention of lights on the moor, Connor scrambled up to join them, dragging his blankets around his shoulder to stay warm.

They watched for something like half the night. Danny fell asleep again first, followed by Stephen, and finally exhaustion drove both Nick and back to their own bunks to find some rest.

The following morning, the lights had vanished and all Nick could see was the jagged grey teeth of the granite tor, miles away across the barren landscape of Dartmoor. It wasn’t long before the sharp rattle of a guard’s baton on their cell door announced that hostilities had commenced again for the day.

The early lockdown had done nothing to dissipate any tension in the prison. The prisoners were for the most part either sullen or aggressive or generally both. It was obvious that the guards were matching them for aggression, often deciding to get their retaliation in first, which probably indicated, according to Danny, that a guard had been injured in the trouble the previous evening in G block. The soldiers were wary, but no more than that. And on two occasions, Nick saw them step in to diffuse tension during the breakfast queue.

Nick and his cell-mates stayed together in the breakfast queue as a matter of habit. The attack on Stephen had brought it home to all three of them that if they wanted to survive their time in Dartmoor, they needed to listen to Danny. None of them went anywhere alone now. To an extent, there was safety in numbers. Even though Danny knew how to handle himself in a fight, it hadn’t been enough to protect him either and, as an ex-copper, he was pretty high on everybody’s shit list. Nick was handy enough with his fists, but he knew perfectly well that he wouldn’t last thirty seconds if someone decided to have a serious go at him. And as for Connor, he wouldn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance, especially not against some of the hard-cases from Albany that were prowling the prison looking for some fun.

Gordie Fraser, the man who had raped Stephen, had been transferred to G wing, but other than that there had been no repercussions as a result of the attack. Fraser’s removal hadn’t made much difference so far as Nick could see, as when one alpha villain was moved, another simply stepped up to take their place. The new top dog on their wing was Lennie Burke, an East End enforcer who had been a little too enthusiastic in a disagreement with a traffic warden, leaving the man with six broken ribs, a broken collarbone and a face that would require extensive reconstructive surgery. But fortunately for them, Burke was what Danny called an old style villain, which presumably meant that he was kind to his mother, wore black at funerals and didn’t fuck kids.

Nick held his plate out and waited while bacon, beans, sausage and scrambled egg were loaded on. The food wasn’t actually too bad, and it was reasonably plentiful, at least when they weren’t stuck in the cells due to one of the all-too-frequent lockdowns. They’d all soon learned to eat while food was on offer, as on other days, a 24 hour lock down could mean nothing more than energy bars to eat and water to drink. It was a recipe for weight gain, and Stephen and Danny had taken to doing seemingly endless press-ups and sit-ups in the cell. They took it in turns to cheer each other on, although at times it seemed like there was more jeering than cheering, a sign that the two men were becoming friends, despite their rocky start.

Each of them automatically waited until the others had been served and then made their way to a table together. They weren’t the only cell-mates with that pattern of behaviour, and Nick sometimes wondered what happened to men in prison who couldn’t trust someone to watch their back. It was a chilling thought, and he lived in dread of an arbitrary decision, at whatever level, that might result in them being split up.

Conversation of any sort was secondary to the important business of shovelling food down as fast as possible before some sort of ruckus kicked off and they all found themselves banged up in the cell again.

Danny finished first, as ever, pushed his plate away and belched.

Stephen grinned and marked him out of ten, awarding only four points, with a bonus one for effort. Danny flipped him the finger and took a drink of his coffee. “I hear the guv’nor had a nasty experience out on the moor yesterday,” he remarked.

Nick looked at him in amazement. “Danny, to my certain knowledge, you’ve not been out of my sight since we left the cell this morning, so how the hell have you managed to hear that?”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Use your ears, mate. I heard two of the screws talking about it while we were in the queue for the roasted rat turds that masquerade as coffee in this place. Seems like his car came off worse in fight with something big and nasty. His driver was crapping himself, by the sound of it.”

The thought of the lights out on the moor the previous night crowded back into Nick’s mind. Danny had said there had been lights the previous night as well, the night before the attack on Lester’s car.

“Do you think the lights have got anything to do with it?” Nick asked. He chewed thoughtfully on a piece of soggy toast and wondered why Danny was pulling an even more peculiar face at him than usual.

“What lights are you talking about?”

The hairs on the back of Nick’s neck prickled and in an attempt at levity, he said, “You said that without moving your mouth, Quinn.”

“Very funny, Cutter,” Captain Ryan said. The soldier’s voice was as soft as his footfall but there was no mistaking the fact that Ryan was a man to be wary of, even though he had a reputation amongst the prisoners of being scrupulously fair. “What lights?”

Nick turned around slowly and looked up at Ryan. The captain was dressed in the same black uniform that all the military guards wore, with a bulky equipment vest over his black teeshirt. He had a pistol strapped to one thigh and a knife on the other and made an imposing sight. He was looming over Nick, a quizzical expression on his face.

“The ones on the moor,” he said, keeping his voice lower than the surrounding hum of conversation. Ryan’s presence beside their table was already creating a stir of interest and being the object of scrutiny by other prisoners or guards was never a healthy development.

Ryan stared down at him, a flicker of interest in his shrewd grey eyes. “The governor’s office, now, all of you.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned and walked off.

Nick looked at the others, shrugged and followed him, with Danny, Stephen and Connor at his heels as the other prisoners started to slowly drum their fists on the tables.

As inconspicuous exits went, theirs wasn’t a good one.


	18. Chapter 18

“So, I gather you have finally seen the light, Professor,” Lester remarked. “Or a light, at least. But I’m afraid that won’t earn you time off for good behaviour, even if you do recant your heresy.”

They were lined up in front of the large mahogany desk like naughty school kids hauled in front of the head teacher, all wearing their identical orange jumpsuits. In comparison, the governor was immaculately dressed in a dark-grey, pinstriped suit, a yellow and white spotted silk tie held in place with a gold clip. As he leaned forward to move a file on his desk, Nick caught a glimpse of bright red braces. He fought hard to stop a grin quirking his lips. Someone had presumably told Lester that wearing bright ties and braces was a good way of making a fashion statement.

“I’m glad you find something amusing,” Lester snapped. “Cutter, since you and your side-kicks arrived here there has been nothing but trouble. And now you’re wasting my time with tales of mysterious lights on the moors.”

“We didn’t come to you of our own accord,” Nick said truculently.

“No, you didn’t, did you?” Lester stood up abruptly, and walked over to the window of his office. The rain was falling again and the mist was back, so there wasn’t much of a view. “It was fortunate that Captain Ryan overheard your…” he hesitated, choosing his words with care, “…little discussion.” The governor turned around and leaned back on the windowsill, his hands gripping the dark wood. He was tense and not doing a very good job of hiding it. “What did these lights look like?”

Nick shrugged. “They were bright. Too bright for torches at that distance, and too large.” He glanced at Danny for corroboration and received a nod in return.

“I saw ‘em first the night before last, guv’nor,” Danny said. “Two, a distance apart, hard to tell how far. I’ve never seen lights there before, but they came again last night.” He paused, frowning, and then continued, “At first I thought it was idiots out on the moor, looking for god knows what, but there was no sign of them moving, so that buggered that theory. They looked like…” Danny trailed off, his craggy face betraying his discomfort.

“Spit it out, Quinn, I haven’t got all day,” Lester drawled.

“They looked like fallen stars,” Danny said quietly, a defiant edge in his voice.

“How very poetic.” Lester’s words were loaded with a liberal dose of his usual sarcasm, but despite that Nick could see interest quickening in the man’s eyes.

“You’ve seen something similar yourself, haven’t you?” he demanded before he could bite the words back. “You think these lights are connected with what’s happening on the moor.” It was a statement not a question, and he could tell from the way Lester’s shoulders tensed that his words had hit home.

Lester met his gaze unflinchingly. “Yes, Cutter, I have seen something similar, and then something the size of a horse, and a damn sight more vicious, put a bloody great big dent in the back of the car I was in at the time.”

“What did it look like?”

“The mist was down, it wasn’t easy to see anything…”

Nick felt a surge of triumph. He didn’t know what the hell had happened, but whatever it was had been enough to rattle the normally composed, sardonic governor of one of the toughest prisons in the country. “You saw the bloody Andrewsarchus, didn’t you?”

“I saw something that fitted the description of the beast that was responsible for the attack at the quarry,” Lester shot back. “I do not for one moment accept your wild theories, Cutter, but this is something that clearly needs more investigation.” He turned to Ryan. “Take all four of them out on the moor, Captain. I want you to pin point where those lights were and check the ground.” The phone on Lester’s desk rang and he picked it up, as though the call was expected. “Ask her to wait in reception. Captain Ryan will be down shortly. He’ll brief her.” He returned the phone to its cradle. “Ms Maitland will accompany you. Jenny Lewis has talked to her employers at the zoo. If it becomes necessary to hold a press conference and lay the blame on an escaped wild animal kept illegally, then that’s what we will have to do.”

“A cover up?” Nick snorted with disgust. “You people don’t change, do you? Do lies become easier the more you tell? Do you expect me to believe for one minute that you really believe the world is only six thousand years old? That the dinosaurs died out because they missed the boat when the ark sailed without them?”

Lester’s eyes narrowed and Nick knew that he’d pushed the point too far.

“We are not here to discuss my beliefs, Cutter, and you would do well to remember why you’re here. Give some thought to the fact that you might well be staying here for the rest of your natural life. Your release depends on your willingness to recant the views that brought you here in the first place, Professor, remember that, as well.”

As ever, Lester contrived to pour a world of scorn into Nick’s former professional title, but try as he might, the governor couldn’t quite manage to replicate the icy manner with which he had first greeted them just over a week ago. Lester’s world view had taken a battering, that much was obvious.

Lester waved his hand imperiously at the door. “I’ll await your report, Captain.”

Ryan nodded and without a word, preceded them from the room. “I want to see the view from your cell window,” he said. “We need to pin-point where we’re looking for on a map.”

That didn’t prove difficult. The captain seemed mildly surprised that the three of them were all in agreement about the location of the lights on one of the tors to the north-west of the prison. He marked the position on a map and then led them down through the prison, under the watchful eyes of their fellow inmates, to a small reception area. Two soldiers were waiting for them. Stephen gave a guarded smile and a slight nod to one of the men, which was returned with a wider, more relaxed smile.

The second soldier was leaning against the peeling paint of the wall, picking his nails with the point of a wicked-looking knife. He nodded at a pile of black jackets on a red plastic chair. “That lot was the best we could come up with, boss.”

“It’ll be better than nothing,” Ryan said. He gestured to the clothing. “Find something that fits. The weather is closing in again, and it’s going to get nasty out there.”

“Makes a change from things getting nasty in here,” Danny remarked cheerfully.

* * * * *

Three black Range Rovers crowded the small parking area, looming large over a bright yellow Mini Cooper, in much the same way as the black uniformed soldiers loomed over its owner. If the animal expert was in any way intimidated by being surrounded by military guards and convicted criminals, she gave no sign of it. Nick was impressed by her air of calm competence.

As the soldiers milled around, looking at maps, Abby commented to Ryan, “The hairs you took off Lester’s car were a match for the others. I presume he told you that?”

From the look of mild irritation on Ryan’s face it seemed the governor hadn’t favoured him with that piece of information, but nor did the soldier look surprised, either.

“Do you know what the animal is?”

“No,” Abby admitted. “We’re waiting for the results of some more tests.” She opened the boot of her car, brought out a long metal box, unlocked it and lifted out a thick-barrelled rifle almost as tall as she was. The stare she gave Ryan was implacable. “We don’t kill the creature unless we have to.”

Ryan was clearly a man who knew when not to get into an argument. He stared at Nick and the others and said quietly, “Try to escape and my men have orders to shoot to kill. Do you understand?”

“Wouldn’t think of it, mate,” Danny said. A rumble of thunder sounded and he rubbed his stomach. “Sorry about that, I think the beans at breakfast were off.”

“Spare us the jokes, Quinn.” Ryan shoved the map in front of Danny’s nose. “Are you sure that’s where you saw the lights?”

Danny shrugged. “As sure as I can be.”

“Then let’s get on with it.”

There was no path across that section of the moor, and Nick soon found it difficult to match the pace Ryan set over the rough ground. Danny’s long legs carried him easily over the tussocked grass and despite his recent injuries even Stephen was matching the captain step for step. In contrast, Connor was already starting to trail behind and Nick knew he was breathing more heavily than he should have been. He thought it was perhaps time he started to join Danny and Stephen in their exercise routines. They were making steady progress across the moor towards the distant tor, but around them, the mist was starting to thicken and Nick could already feel the chill seeping through the borrowed jacket and his feet, in ill-fitting borrowed boots, were already damp.

Stephen was ahead of him, walking at Ryan’s side, his eyes constantly scanning the ground for any tracks. Abby Maitland kept pace with them, showing no visible signs of effort, the tranquilliser rifle slung across her back. They stopped every now and again to consult one of the soldiers, apparently deferring to his knowledge of the terrain. The soldier with the short black hair, permanent stubble and more knives than a kitchen drawer stayed at Nick’s side, watching both him and Connor. Nick’s breath was coming in sharp gasps as he struggled to keep pace with the others and he knew Connor has having the same problems. He was glad when Ryan suddenly called another halt.

He could hear a muttered conversation between the captain, Stephen and the soldier he’d heard referred to as Finn, the one who knew the area.

“…going fucking crazy…” Finn said a note of incredulity in his voice. “Never seen that happen before round here. There’s nothing in the rock to upset a bloody compass.”

“Well something’s causing it to throw a wobbly,” Stephen said. “Have we got another one?”

“The one on my watch is doing the same thing,” Ryan said. “Finn, can we still make it to the tor?”

The young soldier grinned. “Course we can, boss. I used to play up here as a kid, remember? I can get us there and back, no problem.”

Before they could move off again, a low bellow rumbled through the mist. Everyone’s head went up at the sound and Nick could clearly see the look of puzzlement on Finn’s face.

“What the hell was that?” Ryan demanded.

Finn cocked his head on one side and listened. A moment later the bellow came again, but Nick had no idea of the direction. The mist tricked both eyes and ears. The noise was unlike anything Nick had ever heard before and he felt a prickle of unease run down his spine. At his side, he was conscious of the dark-haired soldier holding the assault rifle in readiness, barrel pointing to the ground.

A third bellow sounded even closer to them.

“Hold your fire,” Ryan said. “If that turns out to be a pony we’re going to look fucking stupid if we slot it...”

“It’s not a pony,” Abby said, cutting off the captain’s words. “Not making a noise like that. But don’t shoot until we know what we’re dealing with. I don’t think it’s a carnivore...”

The fourth bellow made Nick jump, and at his side, Connor looked like he’d rather be anywhere than out on a wind-swept, mist-shrouded moorland surrounded by armed men. Nick couldn’t say he blamed him, but despite the eerie noise, Nick’s interest as a zoologist had been well and truly piqued. He’d spent time in various parts of the world studying live animals of every sort, as well as digging for the bones of those long dead, and the nearest sounds he’d heard to these had been the groans of the Galápagos tortoises as they lumbered around the islands calling to prospective mates.

A flurry of wind across the moor parted the mist for a moment, enough for Nick to see a huge, lumbering shape coming towards them down the hillside. It was large, bigger than a rhino but smaller than an elephant, maybe two and a half metres long and around two metres tall, with a beaked nose, similar to that of a hawksbill turtle, and bony spikes on its head. Short legs held up a massive, rounded body. Whatever it was certainly wasn’t built for speed, but Nick instinctively knew that it could probably travel quite fast if something spooked it.

Nick stepped up to Ryan’s side, his mind whirling with possibilities.

“Is it real?” Abby asked, keeping her voice low.

“Some kind of experiment, maybe,” Nick said, following her lead. “Hybrid, throwback? I don’t know.”

“Is it dangerous?” Ryan demanded, his rifle held to his shoulder as he stared at the creature.

“It’s a reptile,” Nick told him, as he started to process what his eyes were seeing. “Five or six tonnes at least. Large supratemporal bosses. Huge oesteoderms on its back. It must be some kind of anapsid.”

“A tortoise?” Abby’s voice was laden with incredulity.

Ryan took a step to the side, making sure he stayed between the creature and the civilians, but a load roar greeted the movement. “I don’t want a bloody zoology lesson, I want to know whether I need to shoot it!”

“Stay in his field of vision,” Abby said sharply. “You’re making him nervous.”

To Nick’s surprise, the captain accepted Abby’s order without question. It was clear the woman knew what she was talking about when it came to animal behaviour, even when none of them had the faintest idea what sort of animal it was.

“It’s a dinosaur,” Connor said, his voice sounding like a child at Christmas who had just discovered that Father Christmas really does exist. “It’s a real dinosaur!”

Ryan shot Connor an incredulous glance, but Nick could see the soldier’s grip tighten on his rifle.

The creature opened its mouth and let out another groaning bellow.

“It’s a herbivore!” Abby said sharply. “Pure veggie. Look, there’s grass on its tongue. Don’t shoot it!”

Nick stepped up to her side, doing as she’d said and remaining within its field of vision. The enormous beast shuffled back a few paces, head lowered and swinging from side to side. Ryan gestured to the others to move together, so it could see them all at once. The soldiers flanked them, eyes hard and wary.

“It might be a veggie, but anything that size can still be dangerous, no matter what it eats,” Stephen said. “Someone’s been doing experiments and it’s got loose.” He shot Ryan a hard look. “There’s an MOD range near here, maybe they’ve been doing something they don’t want anyone to know about.”

“You’ve been listening to rumours, Hart,” Ryan said, not taking his eye off the creature for a moment. “If this was anything to do with the MOD, their lot would be all over the bloody moor looking for it, and they’re not.”

As Ryan spoke, the mist cleared for a moment as the wind swept one low cloud past them, leaving limited visibility on their part of the moor. Up by the towering grey crags of High Tor, shining like a beacon, was one of the lights that they had seen from the window of their cell. Danny Quinn had been right, it did look like a fallen star. Shattered fragments of light hung in the air, twisting and turning. He watched, entranced as the light appeared to expand for a moment, and then an enormous head, the twin to the one staring suspiciously at them out of small eyes surrounded by wrinkled folds of skin, poked through the light and let out a bellow of its own.

The creature in front of them turned and answered the cry, and as they stood and stared, it moved away without giving them a backward glance, lumbering towards the light without any hesitation. The other head withdrew and moments later, the creature followed, stepping into, but not out of, the coruscating light.

At a signal from Ryan, the soldiers promptly fanned out, moving quickly towards the light. A few moment later, Finn called out, “Clear, boss! There’s no sign of either of the fuckers and no prints on the ground on this side, either.”

There was no mistaking the incredulity on Ryan’s face. He stared at Abby and Stephen and said, “I want both of you to check the ground over there as well. But don’t get too close to that… thing.” The look he turned on Nick was as cold as the enveloping mist as he added, “I want some answers, Professor. And I want them now.”


	19. Chapter 19

Ryan pulled up the collar of his jacket against the cold seeping into his bones from the ever-present mist. He watched as Stephen Hart and Abby Maitland followed the deep imprints in the damp ground left behind by whatever it was that had just been swallowed up by the ball of fractured light.

He had no idea what sort of answers he was expecting to get, either from them or from Cutter, but Ryan knew that good intel was the key to solving any problem, and at the moment, it was bloody obvious that they had a problem on their hands. He just didn’t yet know the magnitude of the problem. Ryan didn’t believe for a second that the MoD were responsible for the creatures. He’d meant it when he’d said that if they’d lost the subjects of an experiment, the moor would have been flooded with soldiers. The MoD weren’t renowned for subtlety. The sergeant who’d turned up at the quarry had been taking pot shots at a beast they’d seen on their range, and he’d shown nothing more than a casual interest in the problem.

Connor Temple’s claim that they had just seen a dinosaur was as outlandish as Cutter’s suggestion that the predator that had wreaked such havoc on two prison work parties had been a creature out of their distant past. A distant past that, if you valued your freedom, you wouldn’t admit to believing in. Ryan didn’t understand what the hell was going on, but he knew that Lester would demand answers…

Stephen Hart straightened up from his examination of the ground all around the ball of light. “There are no prints on the far side. None at all. You can see for yourself.” He waved his hand at the soft earth.

Ryan didn’t need to take up his offer. Even from where he was standing he could see that the short grass on the other side was untrammelled, whereas their side was marked by deep prints, commensurate with the obvious bulk of the creature. He had no reason to doubt Cutter’s estimate of five or six tonnes. Ryan wished they’d come equipped to take casts of the prints as proof, but with so many witnesses what they’d seen couldn’t be doubted.

“He’s right,” Abby said. She pulled a notebook and pen out of a pocket in her coat, presumably intending to take some notes, but immediately, the pen was snatched out of her hand by some invisible force and dragged into the middle of the light. Abby jumped back, shock on her face.

“This is what’s interfering with your compasses,” Temple said excitedly. “It’s generating a magnetic field.”

Ryan opened one of the pockets on his equipment vest where, amongst other things, he kept several spare clips of ammunition. He took a standard 9mm parabellum round from one of the magazines and placed it on the palm of his hand, feeling the familiar weight of the steel-jacketed bullet. It rested there for no more than a fraction of a second before the same force plucked it out of his hand and carried it into the centre of the light. It wasn’t exactly a regulation use for ammunition, but he hadn’t gone out onto the moor with a pocketful of loose change.

“Is the magnetism harmful to us?” he demanded.

Temple shook his head. “No, but we need to study it.”

“He’s right,” Cutter broke in. “We need to get instruments to study this. The creatures are coming out of these…” Cutter flapped his hand, unable to come up with a word to encompass what they’d seen. He took a breath and tried again. “These… anomalies. We need to know where they’re coming from.”

“They’re coming from the past,” Temple said with complete conviction. “They have to be, it’s the only explanation, Professor.”

“There’s no animal alive today that looks like that,” Abby Maitland added.

Connor shot her a grateful look and earned himself a very small smile in return. From what Ryan had seen of their animal expert, Abby was not a person who let her guard down easily, and although she radiated confidence Ryan still detected a brittle edge to her. She was a woman used to having to prove herself around men and that had taken its toll.

“If it’s an anapsid,” Connor ventured, emboldened by her smile, “a likely candidate would be Scutosaurus.” His expression was eager now, and he was beginning to look like an enthusiastic puppy in pursuit of a favourite toy. “But that would mean it’s not really a dinosaur, wouldn’t it, Professor?”

“Aye, lad, technically it would mean that.”

“What are you talking about?” Ryan could feel his frustration with the situation starting to build up again. One minute they were talking about dinosaurs and the next minute they weren’t.

Cutter waved his hand again, dismissing Ryan’s question. “It’s technical, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’ve just seen something alive and walking around that went extinct around 248 million years ago and we need to know how it got here.”

Ryan frowned. “You said the other thing was knocking around about 36 million years ago…”

“So you were taking some notice, go to the top of the class,” Cutter said, his voice loaded with sarcasm. “That’s exactly what I said, and if Connor is right – and I’ve no reason to believe he isn’t – then we’re looking at creatures from two different eras of the earth’s past. The Permian, where the Scutosaurus comes from, lasted from around 290 to 248 million years ago, and those chappies were around at the tail end of it. The Andrewsarchus is from the Eocene, that’s anything from 55 to 34 million years ago.” Cutter jabbed a finger at Ryan’s chest, his face intense and animated. “We need to find out how they’re coming through to our time.” His finger jabbed next at the reason they’d all traipsed over the moor in foul weather. “And that thing holds the key. We need to know what’s through there.”

“There’s only one way we can do that, mate,” Danny Quinn commented, and before Ryan could stop him, the gangly ex-copper had stepped up to the cause of all the trouble and stuck his head and shoulders through.

Blade and Finn snapped their rifles up to their shoulders, red laser dots appearing on the back of Quinn’s borrowed jacket, waiting for an order from Ryan.

“Stand easy,” Ryan told them. He stepped up to Quinn, bunched the heavy material of the jacket in his hand and yanked the man backwards.

A grin of pure adrenaline-fuelled exhilaration was plastered on Quinn’s craggy face. “You have got to see that!” he exclaimed, completely unbothered by the weapons trained on him. Quinn grabbed hold of Ryan’s arm and tugged at him. “Take a look, it’s… it’s… bloody amazing! There’s a whole herd of them…”

Ryan could feel command of the situation slipping away from him. Both Cutter and Temple crowded forward, although Stephen Hart sensibly kept his distance, remaining at Abby Maitland’s side and casting wary glances at both Blade and Finn. Ryan straight-armed Cutter in the chest, holding him back. “Wait! No one goes anywhere until I say so!”

He could feel the magnetic pull exerting itself on the numerous pieces of metal on him as though invisible hands were trying to pluck the rifle from his grasp and drag the knife from his leg-sheath. As far as he could see, Quinn’s impulsiveness hadn’t brought him to any harm, and Ryan was conscious of the fact that Lester had sent them out to bring back answers, so clearly this… whatever it was… needed to be investigated.

“Step back!” he ordered in a parade ground voice. It had the desired effect. “Cutter, Quinn, I want you with me but put one foot out of line and you’ll regret it, do you understand me?”

The two men nodded, but Ryan knew perfectly well that he couldn’t rely on either of them not to get carried away by enthusiasm.

Abby Maitland stepped up to join them. “I want to see it as well.”

Ryan was tempted to argue, but Abby had a determined look on her face that told him he’d be wasting his time. “All right, but I go first.” Without waiting for a response, Ryan turned and – drawing in a sharp breath – stepped into the fractured light.

The bright sunlight made him blink in shock as he sucked in a lungful of hot, desperately dry air. As far as his eyes could see, dunes of black sand stretched away in all directions, broken only by sparse patches of vivid green bushes. In the far distance, a massive volcano spewed out puffs of pale smoke that coalesced about it into a bank of cloud. A herd of huge, lumbering creatures fanned out across the rocky ground moving slowly, all identical to the one that they had just seen and the continuation of the tracks from the soft ground on the other side of… whatever it was, picked up again, clearly showing the tracks of two creatures moving away from them.

Wherever he was, he was sure as hell not on a mist-covered moor a few miles from Dartmoor Prison. A moment later, he heard three sharp intakes of breath that told him he was no longer alone.

“Wherever it is, it’s not fucking Kansas,” Quinn remarked. “Shall we draw straws for who gets to play Toto?”

Above them something that Ryan at first took to be a bird swooped down in front of them and landed lightly on the black sand. A lizard-like head started up at Ryan and the creature raised and lowered the crest on top of a small green head, which tilted quizzically to one side as it looked at them.

Cutter stared down at the little beast and said wonderingly, “Coelurosauravus. This really is the Permian!” He took a step forward, running his hand through his damp hair and causing it to stand up in startled spikes. “The past is real… It explains everything.” He turned slowly around, eyes wide. “It explains everything,” he repeated.

Ryan had no idea what the man meant, but he had to admit that wherever they were, it was certainly real and not some sort of mass hallucination. He could feel the sun beating down on his head, drying his hair and clothes, warming away the chills of the mist and rain. The sand under his boots made a scrunching noise as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and he could hear the bellows of the enormous reptiles, calling to each other as they wandered slowly in search of another bush to graze on.

The one that had come through the light might have liked the taste of grass, but it wouldn’t have liked the cold, not in contrast to this hothouse of a world. No wonder it had been happy to go home so quickly.

“We’ve seen enough,” Ryan declared. “Come on, Professor, we need to get out of here.”

“We need to explore!” Cutter responded, predictable in his enthusiasm.

“No we don’t,” Danny Quinn interrupted, holding out his hand with the 9mm bullet that Ryan had taken out of his ammunition clip to test the pull of the magnetic field. “This thing is getting weaker. Ryan’s right, we need to get back.”

Adrenaline spiked in Ryan’s system as he snatched the bullet out of the man’s hand. Quinn was correct, the magnetic field was definitely weaker and even the light itself seemed less bright. He grabbed hold of Cutter’s shoulders and roughly pushed him through the light, only hesitating for a moment to check that Quinn and Abby were following, before jumping after Cutter, getting as far away from the now-fading shards of light as he could.

Ryan hit the soft earth and rolled, coming up on one knee, his M4 still cradled in his arms. Abby and Quinn jumped through as Stephen Hart pulled Cutter to his feet. They all watched, amazed, as the shining ball started to wink on and off like a broken fairy light. A second later, it blinked for a final time, closed in on itself and disappeared, leaving behind nothing but an uninterrupted view of the grey, rain-swept tors.

The silence that followed was broken only by a small chirruping noise.

Ryan looked down.

They’d been followed by one of the small flying lizards.

At least now they might stand a chance of persuading Lester that their collective sanity remained intact.


	20. Chapter 20

“Yes, Prime Minister, I do understand the gravity of the situation. I can assure you that all necessary measures are being taken to contain the problem.” Lester resisted the urge to make a rude gesture while he was speaking, even though there was no one in the room to bear witness against him.

The conversation ended with the usual trite benedictions and Lester replaced the handset on the desk with more force than was strictly necessary.

He had made the call from the privacy of his own rooms on what he believed to be a secure line, but even so, he had given an extremely shortened version of the day’s events. He’d tried to soften the blow as best he could, but Downing Street was, to put it mildly, in a flat spin.

Lester opened his drinks cabinet and poured a very large whisky, taking particular satisfaction in the knowledge that the Prime Minister, a strict teetotaller, would not have approved. After the day he’d had, he felt entitled to kick over the traces for a while. As he’d remarked earlier to Jenny Lewis, you spend your whole career planning for every conceivable eventuality, up to and including alien invasion, only to end up with this.

Bloody dinosaurs.

Ryan’s report, although delivered in the captain’s usual dispassionate manner, had been enough to make the hairs stand up on the back of Lester’s neck. After his close encounter on the moor the day before, his natural scepticism had for once taken a back seat. He’d spent much of the afternoon, even before hearing what had happened on the moor, making enquiries into the activities of any government department that might be operating in the area, but nothing had surfaced that could go any way at all to explain what Ryan and the others had experienced. The MoD seemed to be in the clear, somewhat to his surprise, and Lester had been informed that he could call on their services should it become necessary, but for now, it was the PM’s hope that matters could be contained within Lester’s own resources.

And that was a bloody joke. He’d already had to draft in the army to maintain any pretence of order in the prison. Even with their presence, the whole place was a melting pot threatening to boil over at any minute. The prisoners were four to a cell, they spent more time on lockdown than they did in free association and every day just brought more problems.

Drink in hand, Lester stared out of the window. The bloody moor was still shrouded in a thick mist that showed no sign of shifting. The weather forecast, delivered by Leek at his most irritatingly obsequious, predicted no change in the prevailing conditions for several days. Despite that problem, apart from the offer of heavy artillery from the MoD, the best Lester had obtained during his conversation with the PM was an assurance that he could use the police to keep the area around the national park free of tourists. Local businesses would grumble, but with the weather as foul as it was, only the most hardened of crypto-zoologists and conspiracy theorists were likely to brave the low clouds in the hope of photographs to fuel the obsessions of like-minded individuals around the world.

But the cloud cover also meant that they had little chance of obtaining early warning of any new anomalies, as Cutter had termed them. Starlit nights looked like being a thing of the past, at least for the next week.

Lester sipped his whisky and let his thoughts roam freely.

Cutter. The former professor was a maverick by anyone’s standards, and so was his cell-mate, Danny Quinn, a former policeman convicted of charges of being in possession of child pornography. Lester wondered if Cutter and the others were privy to that piece of information. He thought not. Lester had a very strong suspicion that the allegations had been fabricated by a bent DI who wanted Quinn out of his hair, but it wasn’t his job to look behind the facade of the overworked criminal justice system.

He had Quinn’s file on his desk, along with those of Cutter and his two acolytes. There were other details in there that almost certainly hadn’t been shared either.

On impulse, Lester picked up the phone again and pressed one of the speed dials. “Ryan, bring Cutter to my rooms. I think it’s time the professor and I had another little chat.”

It was 10.30pm. Under normal circumstances, the man would probably have been asleep, but given the events of the day, that was unlikely. Lester had issued orders that Cutter and the other three were to be kept in isolation, and, to his relief, Abby Maitland had accepted Jenny Lewis’ offer of a spare room in her small house in Princetown. Against his better judgment, Lester had allowed the woman to keep the lizard. He needed her goodwill at the moment, and if the creature came as part of the package, then so be it. She had as much interest as he had in keeping their problems secret. Her concern for creatures trapped out of their own time had been obvious, as had Cutter’s, while Stephen Hart appeared to take a more pragmatic view, as did Quinn.

One of the big surprises of the day – apart from the dinosaurs – had been Temple. The gawky, awkward student had proved to be a veritable mine of information. Temple was as knowledgeable as he was excitable, tripping over his words in his attempts to enlighten Lester on the subject of something called a scutosaurus, the large herbivore that had fortunately decide to return through the anomaly rather than remain on Dartmoor, thus proving itself to be a creature of taste and discernment, unlike the monstrosity that had done its best to write off Lester’s car.

A knock on the door announced Ryan’s arrival with Cutter. The soldier looked somewhat disconcerted when Lester told him to leave them alone together, but as volatile as the former academic was, Lester didn’t think for a moment that the man was a danger to him. Clearly, neither did Ryan, as he withdrew a moment later.

The living room of Lester’s apartment was tastefully furnished with various antiques gathered together by his predecessors over the years. Two old, brass lamps provided a warm yellow glow and an open fire burned in the hearth. He watched Cutter look around, taking in his surroundings. The man was dressed in a pair of loose tracksuit trousers and a sweatshirt rather than the customary orange jumpsuit. The four prisoners who had spent much of the day on the moor had been borderline hypothermic and on their return had been ushered into the showers in the soldier’s block, one of the few places in the prison, apart from his own bathroom, that could be guaranteed to dispense even a semblance of hot water.

Without speaking, Lester poured another whisky and handed it to Cutter. The Scotsman lifted the glass to his nose and took a sniff, clearly prepared to scorn Lester’s taste. A moment later, pleasure replaced disdain and Cutter swirled the liquid around and took an appreciative sip.

“Christ, I didn’t expect to taste this for the next few years,” he muttered.

The Lagavulin was clearly working its magic, for which Lester was thankful. From what he’d seen of Cutter, the man could give a herd of rhinoceros lessons in intractability. Anything that mellowed him even slightly was a good thing in the current circumstances.

Lester moved back to one of the windows and Cutter followed him. The mist was showing no signs of lifting. The only lights visible were from the grounds of the prison, and on the encircling wall. It was a while since a prisoner had staged an escape attempt that involved climbing the wall, but the prison museum did have on display a knotted sheet that had been used on one infamous occasion.

“So, you have an explanation for this phenomenon, Professor?” Lester kept his tone – and the use of Cutter’s former title – as neutral as he could. The Prime Minister had left the problem fairly and squarely in Lester’s lap and he needed all the allies he could get.

“A theory,” Cutter said, running a hand through his hair in a now-familiar movement. “Our experience proves that there’s a concrete landscape on the other side of the anomaly. And I think it’s the Earth many millions of years ago.” He laid stress on the word millions by way of a challenge.

Lester continued staring out of the window, deeming it safer not to make eye contact. Cutter knew perfectly well that the chances of him actually believing the mish-mash of nonsense peddled by a government made up of zealots and charlatans was vanishingly small, but Lester had no intention of being drawn into any admissions.

He took a sip of whisky before responding. “And this… anomaly… as you call it, is a door between time zones in the world’s history?”

Cutter gave a grunt of assent, and followed it with a Lagavulin chaser.

“Suppose this remarkable theory is correct, what are the immediate risks?”

“Famine, war, pestilence. The end of the world as we know it. The collapse of your ridiculous government and the lies it peddles. You know, the usual stuff.” The lamplight did nothing to disguise the combative glint in Cutter’s eyes.

“I think I could do without the facetiousness,” Lester said mildly. He reached out for the bottle and poured another generous measure into Cutter’s glass. “This ridiculous government, as you call it, has tasked me with dealing with the problem, Cutter, by any means necessary.”

“You could try just denying it,” Cutter suggested, his face softened for a moment by a swift grin that made him look younger. “That’s what you lot normally do.”

Lester allowed himself a somewhat theatrical sigh. “Cutter, I’ve had something that looked like a big cat with jaws like a crocodile attacking a car I was in. I think that takes me slightly beyond the stage of advocating plausible deniability, doesn’t it? So, let’s just suppose for a moment, shall we, that your theory – however preposterous – is true? From what Ryan told me, the two creatures came from different time periods. So what does that mean?”

Cutter savoured the whisky and drew the moment out for full effect. “It means that there is more than one anomaly. And that’s corroborated by what Danny and I saw from the window of the cell. There have been big cat sightings on Bodmin Moor for decades. Maybe we’ve just found the answer.” Cutter turned to Lester, making the avoidance of eye contact impossible now. “Maybe we’ve just found a lot of answers.”

This time, Lester’s sigh was real not feigned. “And you’ve been looking for some of those answers for a long time, haven’t you, Cutter?” He could tell from the sharp intake of breath that greeted his statement that the words had hit home. “So I can rely on your full cooperation, can I? And indeed that of your friends…”

Cutter’s eyes narrowed and he glared at the buff-coloured files on Lester’s desk. “What are you getting at?”

Lester allowed himself a slight smile. The fish had taken the bait. Time to reel him in now. “I gather that your wife had some interesting theories. She was fascinated by the things that didn’t fit, wasn’t she, just like you are? By the parts of the puzzle that even Darwin couldn’t explain.”

“My wife was a serious scientist!”

“But her theories had become a bone of contention between you, hadn’t they, Professor?”

Cutter made a move towards the files on the desk, but Lester stepped in front of him and made a show of refilling his glass. “Those files are confidential, but I can assure you that the Crown Prosecution Service did a remarkably thorough job of preparation when they came to your case. You were the first high profile academic to be brought to court for creation denial. They wanted to make sure they had a cast-iron case.”

A very Scottish-sounding snort greeted that statement. Lester knew perfectly well that the trial had been a total sham but the government had wanted the publicity so they had insisted to their day in court – or three days as it had turned out. The newspapers and internet had been full of the story. Stephen Hart’s good-looks had been the delight of many a tabloid hack and even the hapless Temple had attracted a few supporters. Following their conviction but before sentencing, the three men had been given the opportunity to recant, but none of them had taken it, so the book had been thrown at them. A series of other trials followed in quick succession, the ice having been well and truly broken. There were still some academics prepared to risk jail for their beliefs, but plenty of others were toeing the party line.

Somewhat to Lester’s surprise, Cutter simply sipped his whisky and carried on staring into the darkness. Eventually, he drew in a long, slow breath, exhaled equally slowly and then said, “Are you suggesting that my wife stumbled on one of these things?”

“It would explain several of her theories,” Lester said. “It might also explain why nothing has been seen of her for the past eight years.”

Cutter’s next drink of whisky would be better described as a gulp than a sip and a moment later, he held his glass out for a refill.

Lester allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction as he turned away and reached for the decanter. It looked very much like the bait had been taken.


	21. Chapter 21

Ryan closed the cell door as quietly as he could even though he knew that the rasp of the bolts opening and closing would almost certainly have awoken the men inside. He’d delivered Cutter back to his cell after a lengthy session with Lester that smelt like it had involved copious amounts of the governor’s whisky.

He stood for a moment staring at the metal door, the image of a pair of long-lashed blue eyes coming uncomfortably to mind. He couldn’t deny that he was attracted to Stephen Hart but there was no way he was going to act on that attraction.

He’d seen far too much abuse of both men and women in the system since his secondment to the Prison Service and it still galled him that there had been insufficient evidence for the governor to do anything about what had, without a shadow of a doubt, been a case of rape. But with Jackson backing up Gordie Fraser’s version of events and Fraser’s cronies all telling the same story, there had been nothing anybody could do.

Fraser was now causing trouble on G Wing, but there were enough hard cases over there for him not to be having an easy time of things, and with Jackson dead he’d lost the clout that having a guard in his pocket had given him. Although he’d had no proof, Ryan had been certain that Jackson had been taking bribes from certain prisoners. But the creature on the moor had brought that profitable little side-line to an abrupt end.

Ryan walked slowly down the wing, his footsteps loud in the silence of the cavernous central hall. Turning the lights out in prison eventually had the same effect as throwing a cover over a budgie’s cage. Gradually the noise diminished until all that could usually be heard by this time of night was the footfall of the guards patrolling the corridors and the snores coming from numerous cells. Occasionally someone would wake up and make themself unpopular by yelling and rattling a mug on the metal door, but too much of that sort of behaviour would invariably soon end in a beating from their fellow prisoners while the guards turned a blind eye.

He exchanged low greetings with the various guards he passed on his way out of the wing. The men he talked to were nervous and doing a bad job of disguising it. The trouble earlier in the day in G Wing that had ended in one guard with a ruptured spleen and another with serious concussion had left the majority of the guards certain that the unrest and violence wouldn’t be long in spreading to the other wings. That sort of pessimism was bad for morale, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy as the prisoners subtly but decisively gained the upper hand.

Oliver Leek, Lester’s deputy, had been in favour of a strictly enforced lockdown throughout the prison, but Lester had been reluctant to inflame an already volatile situation. The ringleaders had been hauled off to solitary confinement to cool their heels in cells even more spartan than the ordinary ones, with no more than a thin mattress on the floor, one blanket and a bucket to piss and shit in. Any prisoner foolish to stage a dirty protest was simply left to stew in their own filth, in darkness, with only the most basic amount of food being pushed through a hatch in the door. Very few men were able to endure those conditions for long. But with the overcrowding situation and the minimal free association, Ryan felt the prison was fast reaching the situation where solitary confinement was not enough of a threat to ensure good behaviour.

Ryan hadn’t exactly been thrilled when news of this posting had come through, and neither had any of the other officers or the men. But the government’s abrupt withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan had freed up numerous units previously engaged in attempts to lend aid to the emerging civil powers. The troopers hated having to act as prison warders and Ryan set little store by any statements that this was purely a temporary measure. The prison population was growing at an ever-increasing rate and with men and women being treated like battery hens, frequently locked up for around twenty-two hours a day, the tensions weren’t going to improve any time soon.

On the plus side, the strange situation on the moor promised to alleviate the monotony that the secondment had thrust onto Ryan and his men. He’d had some weird assignments in his time, but none of them had involved rips in time and creatures from the earth’s distant past. A distant past that wasn’t even meant to exist.

He made his way back to Lester’s rooms as he’d been instructed and gave a quiet knock on the door.

“Enter.” Ryan could hear the weariness in the governor’s voice even in that single word.

Lester was still standing by the window in the same position he’d been in when Ryan had escorted former-Professor Nick Cutter back to his cell. The level in the whisky decanter had dropped and Lester held a glass in his hand containing a generous slug of spirit. The governor poured a large measure into another glass and handed it to Ryan.

“Am I making a mistake, Captain?”

Ryan considered the question as he took a sip of the whisky and savoured the peaty taste. Even if he’s been still on duty, this would have been worth breaking the rules for. “Cutter seems to know what he’s talking about,” he said eventually.

Lester laughed but there was no humour in it. “He was sent here for holding heretical beliefs about the age of the earth and refusing to accept the truth of divine creation. The judge certainly didn’t think he knew what he was talking about.”

“He seems to be an expert on dinosaurs, sir,” Ryan said, refusing to rise to the bait. “And that’s what we need right now.”

“Do you really believe we’re dealing with dinosaurs, Ryan?”

Ryan shrugged. “I saw what was on the other side of that ball of light, sir. I sure as hell wasn’t on Dartmoor any more.”

“And you don’t think it’s all a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing?”

So Lester still thought there was a possibility that the MOD were mixed up in what was going on, despite the Defence Minister’s denials. “They might be capable of genetically engineering a cross between a wolf and a lion, or whatever the hell the thing that’s been carrying out the attacks is, but I don’t think they’ve somehow managed to create an entire landscape to put them in, or cook up something that looks like a giant turtle without a shell.” Ryan took another mouthful of whisky. “To be honest, sir, I think I find it easier to believe in dinosaurs.”

* * * * *

The small green lizard raised the crest on the top of his head and let out a chirruping noise.

Jenny held a grape between her fingers and rather gingerly extended it to her new housemate.

To give the creature its due, it took the grape carefully in its small jaws, raised and lowered its crest again, and then backed off to devour its prize.

With the heating now turned up full blast in the small house that came with her job as the prison’s press officer, Jenny was glad of the chilled white wine and soda that Abby had just poured. They were now embarking on their second bottle. She felt the arrival of a prehistoric flying lizard in her life justified the breaking of her rule against drinking during the week.

She took a large mouthful of the wine and stared again at the creature perched on her coffee table. “Is he really a dinosaur?”

Abby grinned at her. “No, according to Connor, he’s too old to be an actual dinosaur so technically he’s just a prehistoric lizard.”

Jenny sniffed. “He looks like a dinosaur to me.” She remembered looking at books about dinosaurs when she was a kid, in the days before that sort of thing could get you thrown into jail. “Although if anyone else sees him, I’ll swear blind he’s an exotic species of lizard from Indonesia.”

“Draco Volans,” Abby said. “But they glide rather than fly. How did you know they come from Indonesia?”

“Lucky guess,” Jenny admitted. “Although I always was rather good at Trivial Pursuit.” She picked up her glass and held it out to Abby in salute. “I have absolutely no idea how I got involved in something as ridiculous as dinosaurs, but I’m extremely glad you’re in it with me.”

“How on earth did you end up in Dartmoor Prison?” Abby asked.

Jenny sighed theatrically. “Well it wasn’t for murder, although I have to admit there were times when I was tempted.” She tucked her feet up underneath her on the threadbare sofa, covered with a bright red throw she’d brought from her London flat. It was obvious that Abby thought she was more suited to Sloane Square than the grey granite of her current surroundings and that wasn’t a view Jenny disagreed with. “I broke up with my fiancé,” she said. “It’s a long story, but let’s just say that at the time, I was looking to put some degree of distance between us.”

“You certainly managed that,” Abby conceded. “I just hope he doesn’t have a holiday cottage in the West Country.”

“Why do you think I avoided the Isle of Wight?” And it wasn’t just because the idea of a prison full of sex offenders and paedophiles was hardly appealing. It was just a shame that a large number of them had been transferred to Dartmoor within a month of her arrival.

A chirruping noise announced that the lizard was still hungry. Jenny fed him another grape and hoped the creature was house-trained, although somehow she doubted it.

“So what about you?” she asked. “Is there a lizard-loving boyfriend waiting for you at home?”

Abby rolled her eyes expressively and scratched her new green friend under his scaly chin. “No. Men don’t seem to find the fact that I spend a lot of my day up to my elbows in animal dung very appealing.”

The lizard hopped up onto the arm of Abby’s chair and bumped his head against her hand, clearly liking the attention.

“Do you think he looks like a Rex?” she asked.

“Well, he doesn’t look much like a Boris.”

Jenny reached out and poured the rest of the bottle of Pinot Grigio into their glasses. After all, it wasn’t every day she got to have a prehistoric lizard as a house guest.


	22. Chapter 22

The noise of the bolts being drawn back on the cell door jolted Stephen out of an uneasy sleep in which the living and the dead had jostled for space inside his head, bringing back memories that he would rather not revisit.

He propped himself up on his elbows and waited for the door to be closed and relocked before he said, “Cutter? Is everything all right?”

“Depends on your definition of all right, lad,” Nick said quietly.

Familiar with the cell even in the pitch dark, Nick made his way to his bunk beneath Danny’s bed, the creaking of the wooden slats under the thin mattress telling Stephen when his friend had settled down.

“Someone’s been sharing the guv’nor’s scotch,” Danny said admiringly. “Hob-nobbing with the big boss, eh?”

Danny had obviously smelled the same thing as Stephen had, the sweet scent of alcohol on Nick’s breath.

“Drinks Lagavulin so he can’t be all bad,” Nick muttered, as though he was trying to convince himself as well as them. “He needs our help.”

“He needs your help, you mean,” Danny said. “You can write what I know about dinosaurs on a fag-paper and still have room to spare.”

“You saw what was on the other side of that anomaly, Danny, so you’re in this whether you like it or not.”

Danny let out a low whistle. “Great, does that mean I get to drink decent scotch with the guv’nor as well?”

“You never know your luck,” Stephen commented. “If anyone can, you can, Danny boy. So what sort of help is he looking for, Cutter?”

“He wants us to work with Captain Ryan and his men, identifying what creatures might represent a threat”

“He wants us to help the military decide how big a gun to use, is that it?” Stephen had worked with animals enough in his life not to view them through rose-tinted spectacles, but he didn’t like the idea of destroying any creature unnecessarily, especially ones that could teach them so much, even though such knowledge was now strictly forbidden.

“No! We can’t kill these creatures unless there is absolutely no other way. I’ve already told Lester that he could wreak untold havoc by doing that.”

“A butterfly flaps its wings in the Permian and we all end up with two heads?” Connor chimed in from the bunk underneath Stephen’s.

“Aye, something like that, laddie.”

“And he believed you?” Stephen was conscious of the fact that he seemed to have slipped into the role of Devil’s advocate, but this seemed the sort of situation that the phrase ‘beware of Greeks bearing gifts’ had been coined for. He wondered quite how much help they could be to the governor, or to Ryan and his men. He supposed they could make a few educated guesses about what time period any creatures might come from and Connor’s encyclopaedic memory would be a distinct bonus there. Stephen’s tracking skills had already come in useful, so maybe they did have something to bring to the party…

“The man’s not an idiot,” Nick said. “He knows this isn’t a situation where they can just send the soldiers in, all guns blazing, much as he’d like to.” Nick chuckled. “I think he would have preferred to be dealing with an alien invasion than this.”

Stephen couldn’t help laughing. In a country where the authorities locked you up and threw away the key for not espousing the beliefs of the young earth creationists it looked very much like they might just have found themselves jobs as dinosaur hunters.

* * * * *

“Get up, you lazy bastards!”

The cell door was kicked open, startling everyone awake. They’d all talked late into the night and had finally fallen asleep not long before their usual early morning wake-up call was delivered by one of the guards. Stephen’s head felt like someone had poured cement in through both ears and then stuffed some up his nose, for good measure.

It wasn’t advisable to be too late into the breakfast queue, not unless you liked eating stone-cold food. The three of them had followed Danny’s example and had perfected the art of rapid rising, helped by the fact that they all slept fully dressed in a usually vain attempt to stay warm. It didn’t take long to brush your teeth, splash some cold water on your face and scramble out of the cell, especially when shaving was something that only got done once every few days, if at all.

The general atmosphere in the prison seemed even worse than usual, if that was possible. The breakfast queue was bad-tempered, with arguments flaring for no reason as men pushed and shoved, not wanting to back down over even the smallest of slights, real or imaginary. Stephen did his best to avoid eye contact with anyone, giving up his place in the queue to a multiple rapist from Cardiff without complaint. Danny caught his eye and gave an approving nod.

They got their food and a hot – or rather lukewarm – drink and quickly made their way over to an unoccupied table.

“I don’t like the fucking atmosphere in here,” Danny muttered.

Stephen raised his eyebrows. “I haven’t liked the fucking atmosphere since the day we arrived.”

“This place is ticking away like a bloody time bomb.” Danny jerked his head in the direction of a small huddle of guards over by one of the walls. “Look at them, they’re scared. Shit scared, the lot of them. Something’s about to go down and they know it.”

“What sort of something?” Nick said quietly.

“I don’t know, but if anything kicks off, we get back to the cell and stay there. Got it?” Danny’s eyes met his and the ex-copper gave Stephen a hard stare. “No heroics, Hart. We get back to the cell and stay there.”

Stephen nodded. He’d disregarded Danny’s advice once and he knew where that had got him. The tension in the air was all too palpable. Stephen found himself automatically checking the enormous central area of the wing to see who was between them and the relative safety of their cell. Darren Price, a drug dealer from Plymouth, was in a huddle by one wall with several of his cronies. Stephen caught the swift movement of hand to hand between two of the men and thought he’d seen a shiv – a homemade blade – change hands. In prison almost anything could be made into a weapon, even the handle of a plastic toothbrush, and there were plenty in circulation.

Nick stood up abruptly. “Let’s take a turn around the yard. This place is starting to make my skin crawl.”

Stephen agreed with him. The air was heavy with tension, like a storm about to break. They made their way through the recreation area to the door to the exercise yard. The guards on the outer doors stood with their hands on their tasers, looking more nervous than Stephen had ever seen. Their brash confidence was gone now and they wore the hunted look of men who knew it would take little for the veneer of control to be stripped away from them. Only the soldiers retained any outward veneer of confidence.

Once outside, they drifted around the yard, following Danny’s rule of keeping themselves to themselves and not making eye-contact, whilst doing their best to pick up snippets of conversation as they went. A guard had been assaulted the previous night on D wing when one of the inmates had wanted to finish a game of pool before returning to his cell for the night. When the guard had refused to let him, the man had stabbed him in the stomach with the thin end of the cue before he was tasered and dragged back to his cell. Only the presence of three of the soldiers had prevented the trouble spreading.

The weather outside was miserable, the air damp and cloying, like standing in the middle of the very fine spray from a lawn-sprinkler. The two guards stayed under cover in the doorway, but the sentry posts on the walls were manned by soldiers with guns, keeping a watchful eye on the few prisoners who had braved the weather for some semblance of exercise.

Looking up, Stephen realised that one of the men keeping watch was Rob Finn, the young soldier who had helped him track the Andrewsarchus across the moor. Finn held his rifle across his chest ready for trouble, but when he saw Stephen below him in the yard he raised one hand in acknowledgement.

By the time they’d made a circuit of the grey-walled yard, Stephen was cold and damp, but that was still preferable to breathing the stale air of the prison, redolent with cigarette smoke and the smell of stale sweat. Unfortunately for non-smokers, the smoking ban had not got as far as prison, with the cells being defined as the prisoners’ homes, and with the constant back-drop of unrest and violence, depriving the inmates of that particular pleasure was seen by many to be a step too far so far as stability was concerned.

On their third circuit of the yard, Stephen noticed that Finn was staring out across the moor, not down into the yard. Stephen nudged Nick and gestured up at the soldier.

“He’s seen something,” Nick muttered. “If there’s a break in the mist, he might have caught sight of something up on High Tor.”

Nick’s theory was confirmed when Finn called down, “Hart, get up here!”

The soldier was talking rapidly into one of the personal radios the military contingent all carried as Stephen climbed the ladder to the guard post watched by every one of the men in the yard, curious to see what had caused Stephen to be summoned like that. As soon as he arrived on the top of the stone-built tower, Stephen knew exactly why Finn had wanted him there.

The mist covering the moor had thinned in places and it was just possible to see the glint of silver amidst the rocks of the distant tor. Stephen drew in his breath sharply, which was all the answer Finn needed.

“Boss?” Finn was speaking into his radio again, presumably talking to Ryan. “Yeah, I’ve got Hart up to take a look and he agrees with me. There’s definitely something out there.” He paused, listening to the response but whatever he was being told was suddenly drowned out by a long blast on the klaxon horns mounted throughout Dartmoor Prison.

Even after his relatively short stay at Her Majesty’s expense, Stephen was familiar with that particular signal. It meant that lockdown was being announced with immediate effect.

At his side, Finn swore luridly and said, “OK, I’ll do my best, but if this lot don’t use lockdown as an excuse to kick off, I’ll eat Lyle’s keks.” Finn was silent again for a moment and then he ended with the words, “Oh shit. Copy that, boss.” He turned to Stephen, a troubled look on his normally cheerful face. “D wing has gone fucking ballistic and this lot won’t be far behind them. I need to get you four out of here and to the guv’nor’s office.”

A high-pitched scream from across the yard drew their attention. One of the guards in the doorway was clutching his face, blood streaming between his fingers; the other was on the ground, curled into a defensive ball. Prisoners mobbed the two men, hands grabbing for both keys and weapons.

“I can’t get a clear fucking shot,” Finn said, his voice calm, despite the sudden explosion of violence in the courtyard.

“They’ll rip you to pieces if they get half a chance,” Stephen said, already swarming down the ladder to get back to Nick and Connor, knowing that the flashover from the attack on the guards would now be as indiscriminate as it was violent. He could already hear shouts and screams rising even above the strident noise of the klaxon.

“They’re not going to get the chance,” Finn said grimly. “I’d sooner face this lot than the shit I’ll get from the boss if I don’t get you four out of here.”

It didn’t seem like the time to mention that if he failed to get them out, Finn would probably not be in a fit state to take shit from anyone but, from the look on the young soldier’s face, Stephen felt that he was probably well aware of that.

Ahead of them, one of the rioting prisoners was kicking hard at the prone form of the guard on the ground. The guard’s face was already as much of a bloody ruin as that of his colleague who looked to have had his eye gouged out by a shiv like the one Stephen had seen being flashed by the drug-dealer in the recreation room. The man’s cries had changed to a sort of gulping whine, sounding like an animal in distress rather than a human being, then the noise was abruptly curtailed and the sudden silence was even more chilling than the noise had been.

“Get behind me!” Finn ordered. “I presume none of you want to stay here, do you?”

It was clear in a matter of seconds that none of them wanted to throw in their lot with the rioters. Stephen suspected that news of Nick’s late night talk with the governor had probably reached the ears of some of their fellow prisoners by now and they had almost certainly been labelled as grasses, even if none of the men knew the nature of the conversation. A disturbance like this was an excuse to settle scores both with the guards and other prisoners and with two guards already dead, the reprisals were going to be fierce, no matter what happened next, so there was going to be a huge element of being hanged for a sheep as a lamb that would now come into play.

There had been no more than about ten men in the exercise yard, but they had proved more than enough to bring down two guards. Stephen hoped that the soldiers would prove less easy to overpower, and no doubt Ryan’s men would by now have been given orders to use deadly force if needed.

That thought was confirmed a second later when the head of one of the prisoners still kicking the lifeless body of one of the guards suddenly exploded like an over-ripe watermelon, blood, bone and brains spraying out in a wide arc. Behind him, Stephen heard Connor let out a choking cough. He turned around and grabbed his friend by the arm. They couldn’t afford to become separated if Connor stopped to be sick.

Finn stuck the pistol he’d used to shoot the prisoner back into his thigh holster and turned the butt of his rifle against one of the other men, dropping him easily while the man gawped at the nearly headless body on the ground, a homemade knife still clutched in his hand.

Stephen reached out and grabbed the weapon. Broken pieces of razor blade had been set in a long, serrated line along the edge of a piece of wood possibly fashioned from a bed-slat. The shiv was coated in blood and had most probably been the weapon used to blind the first guard to have been taken down.

The sound of the klaxon made rational thought hard to sustain. The noise was augmented by the sound of furniture being smashed and the familiar sound of tin mugs being beaten against the metal of the cell doors, but now the drumming was louder and more ominous that it had ever been before.

And as they shouldered their way through to the door, Stephen heard the rattle of automatic fire and smelled the acrid reek of smoke.

The trouble on D wing had now flashed throughout the prison.

It would take nothing short of divine bloody intervention to get them out in one piece.

Unfortunately, it looked very much like their career as dinosaur hunters was about to come to an abrupt end.


	23. Chapter 23

“Joel, withdraw your men!” Ryan ordered as he hurried down the corridor, speaking into the mouthpiece of his radio headset. “D Wing’s a lost cause. Anyone not involved will have holed up in their cells by now.” He waited a moment for Joel Stringer’s affirmative response and then demanded, “Lyle, what’s the score with A Wing?”

“Seen worse,” Lyle declared laconically, his voice surprisingly clear over the comms link, despite the noise in the background. “We’re winning, but I think Joe Wilder’s lads are under pressure in G. Do you want me to get over there when we’ve mopped up here?”

“Yes. I want this place sewn up as tight as a virgin’s cunt.” But before that, he wanted Cutter and his friends out of C Wing.

The last contact he’d had with young Rob Finn had been when he’d been making a dash back to the relative safety of an unoccupied cell with the governor’s latest protégé and his friends. Too many prisoners stood between them and the exit from the wing for them to break out by themselves. It would be up to Ryan to send in the cavalry to get them out of a seething mass of rioting prisoners, all hell-bent on doing as much damage as possible. He was just grateful for the fact that he still had a working comms link to Finn.

* * * * *

“Get the bunks against the door!” Finn ordered as they piled unceremoniously into an unoccupied cell.

Danny promptly turned around to do exactly that. The soldier looked young, but he’d done a good job of getting them out of the maelstrom of violence in C Wing and his voice had held the whiplash crack of command when the chips had gone down. Finn had very effectively fought fire with fire, not hesitating to react with an overwhelming display of force, putting bullets into the heads of at least three prisoners who had decided to express their dislike of the guards as they’d fought their way through the riot to the nearest cell. He’d also taken two more off at the knees, quite literally blowing their legs apart, leaving them screaming on the ground. If the men didn’t get medical help soon, they’d die. Danny knew exactly what Finn was doing by not killing them outright. A wounded enemy tied up more resources on the other side than a clean kill, and the chances were that the injured prisoners would have some friends amongst the rioters who would do their best to get them out of the melee.

Danny had tried – and failed – to feel sorry for the men. They were rapists, murderers and drug dealers who had decided that there was more to be gained from plundering the system than simply getting their heads down and grafting through their time. Two of the dead men had been Gordie Frazer’s close associates, and he’d certainly weep no tears for them.

“We’re holed up in cell 25, boss,” Danny heard Finn telling Ryan. “Safe enough for now, I think, but if you want Cutter and co in a hurry, there’s nowt I can do about it.”

The sound of screaming beyond the metal door suddenly took on a different note, no longer the chilling yells of prisoners gone feral, but afraid now, menaced by something outside their control.

Finn clambered onto the bottom bunk and pressed his face up against the small hatch on the door to get some idea of what was happening outside,

“Oh shit…” Finn moved back from the door, a look of disbelief on his face. “Professor, take a look at this.”

Cutter took his place on the bunk and put his eye to the small hole in the door. “An anomaly’s opened up out there,” he said, sounding almost unconvinced by his own statement.

He moved aside, and Danny took his place. The professor was right. A bloody great big anomaly was hanging in the air in the middle of the free association area. Something that looked like it had been made redundant from the set of Jurassic Park had just come through the sparkling ball of light and was already stalking one of the rioting prisoners. In response to the yells from his confederates, the man grabbed a chair and turned to take on the feathered dinosaur.

The creature stood as tall as a Dartmoor pony, with plumed blue feathers cresting its bony head, running down its neck and body to join seamlessly with a tail that looked like it had been stolen from a peacock. Despite its undeniable beauty, it had a vicious streak a mile wide. Instead of attacking the bloke with the chair, it leaped past him, striking an onlooker in the face with its strong beak.

Danny blinked in shock. The creature had just pecked the man’s eye out. He moved to one side and pulled Connor forwards. “Come on, genius, what the hell’s that?”

Connor squinted through the open hatch. “Can’t see anything…” Followed quickly by, “Raptors of some sort. There’s more of them coming through, oh hell, they’re….”

The sound of screaming could be heard all too clearly through the steel door. Connor scrambled away, looking pale, and swallowed hard before vomiting into the toilet. By the sound of it, pecking eyes out was something of a party piece for the newcomers. Danny didn’t blame Connor for throwing up.

“Some sort of bloody great big bird-thing, boss,” Finn said, relaying the latest information to Ryan. “Like a peacock on steroids with one fuck of an attitude problem. Tell the lads to keep their visors down if they come in. The sods like going for eyes.”

“It’s carnage out there,” Stephen said, a note of desperation in his voice. “We need to do something.”

Finn shook his head. “We need to stay alive, and that means we stay here. Just thank fuck those things turned up, because if not, that lot out there would be hammering on our door. So no fucking heroics. Stay put, stay quiet. Stay alive,” he said, fixing Stephen with a hard stare. “You’ve seen what they’re capable of. You can’t reason with a mob, mate. Trust me, been there, done that, seen a friend ripped apart like a fucking scarecrow.”

It was the longest speech Danny had heard from the soldier. And by the look on Stephen’s face, it had done the trick, which was good. They had enough to worry about without Stephen Hart playing at being the cloaked crusader.

Something slammed hard against the door. Danny wasn’t sure whether it was another prisoner trying to get in, or simply a body being flung aside in the increasing chaos outside. The door rattled and scraped inwards by a couple of inches. Danny and Finn promptly put their shoulders against the bunk and pushed it back into place.

“Come on, boss,” Finn muttered into his throat mic. “It’s not sounding healthy out there.”

* * * * *

“Visors down, shields up!” Ryan ordered. “If it’s not human you’ve got my say-so to kill it.”

“Never thought Gordie Frazer was very human,” someone commented. “Shame he’s not still in there.”

“Can’t have everything,” Ryan said. “If anyone in C wing gives trouble, I won’t be asking any questions afterwards, and neither will the governor.” Frazer had been moved to G wing after raping Stephen Hart and had almost certainly been amongst one of the ring-leaders instrumental in kicking off all the current shit. Ryan knew perfectly well that Joe Wilder would have done his best to take down Frazer, and if he’d succeeded, Ryan doubted he’d get anything other than Lester’s thanks.

The governor had explicitly given permission for the use of deadly force if needed. Their instructions were clear. So far as C wing was concerned, their job was to get Cutter and his cellmates out alive and lock the rest down. Starve a riot of oxygen and it would soon fizzle out. Lester’s view was that if prisoners wrecked their own accommodation, that was their problem and they could live with the consequences. In one of his previous positions, he’d simply starved the rioters out; in another, when they’d started to set fire to some furniture, he’d borrowed a water-cannon from the local riot troops and deployed that, with interesting consequences. Their only option was to go in hard and fast. If they got Cutter and the others out alive, Ryan would count it as a win, anyone else was an acceptable loss.

Damage limitation weren’t words that figured heavily in Ryan’s vocabulary in circumstances like this. It was one area in which he agreed with Oliver Leek.

“Get to cell 25, get Finn, Cutter, Temple, Hart and Quinn out of there alive and in one piece. Any questions?” Ryan looked at the ten man squad he was sending in. They were all hard lads who were trained to take no shit off anyone. They had a mate holed up in there and they were intending to get him out. Simple.

There were no questions. There hadn’t even been any when he’d told them to stay away from the big, shining diamond in the middle of the recreation area and to be on the lookout for something that looked like a cross between an emu and a peacock, with the attitude problems of a pitbull terrier with a wasp up its arse. After what he’d seen from the cell, Finn had embellished his description in subsequent reports.

Ryan unlocked the first set of doors while one of the soldiers kept him covered with his riot shield, and then they were through the next set, moving in tight formation, like a Roman testudo, riot shields up, using brute force to sweep away any opposition. Ryan and Blade stayed out of the main formation and were prepared to pick off anyone who looked like causing serious problems. Two prisoners made a break for the door as soon as it opened. They were both promptly tasered. A brightly-coloured bird-thing stood over a body sprawled on the floor, pecking at the man’s chest through a blood-stained teeshirt. Ryan shot it and the creature crumpled to the floor in a mess of electric blue feathers. Another one had already had the tables turned on it, quite literally, pinning it against the wall while a couple of prisoners bashed it with plastic chairs.

Furniture bounced off the plastic riot shields and was kicked aside. The appearance of the soldiers fanned the flames again, distracting the prisoners from the rip in time that had appeared without warning in their midst. It was fucking chaos on the wing, but the soldiers were well-trained, well-protected and very determined. Opposition was bludgeoned hard, knocked to the ground by the lead-tipped extendable batons that were as good as guns at close range.

“Finn, get ready to move,” Ryan instructed, speaking into his radio. “I want you out of there and running on the count of ten.” As his mental countdown reached one, the door of cell 25 was yanked inwards and Danny Quinn came out at a run, holding tight to Connor Temple’s arm. Behind him came Cutter, with Stephen Hart and Rob Finn bringing up the rear.

One of the bird-things chose that moment to lunge forward, shrieking like a banshee. Hart grabbed a chair and slammed it into the creature’s head without even breaking stride. A second one scrambled over the body of the first. A moment later, its chest sprouted a black-handled knife. Blade retrieved his weapon and promptly decapitated the bird.

As the soldiers broke ranks and then equally quickly reformed around the men they’d been sent to protect, Ryan realised that the ball of fractured light was starting to flicker and go dim. By the time they’d retreated off the wing, it had winked out of existence, leaving two of the birds behind. Ryan managed to pick one off with a lucky head shot. The other went down under a broken table leg wielded by one of the prisoners. For a change, Ryan felt like cheering the man on, despite his rap sheet for multiple rape.

Ryan grabbed hold of the door and yanked it closed while Blade stood at his side, a long-bladed knife sufficient deterrent to anyone who might have been considering making a bid for freedom. He turned the key in the lock and the tight knot of soldiers moved back behind the second set of doors that Ryan equally promptly locked.

Objective achieved. Ryan pulled his phone out of his pocket and prepared to deliver the good news the governor.


	24. Chapter 24

“Coffee or tea?” Jenny asked, as Abby appeared in the kitchen doorway.

Her temporary lodger was wearing a pair of stripy pyjama bottoms and a pink camisole top, with her hair standing up in bleached spikes. Jenny was still in her nightdress, but she had at least managed to tame her hair, which after the amount of alcohol they’d consumed the night before counted as a win.

Jenny occupied a rented house on one of the many small estates in Princetown mainly inhabited by people who worked at the prison, which included nearly everyone in the area. When Lester had asked her if she would mind putting Abby up for a few days in case of more anomaly-related activity, Jenny had jumped at the opportunity for some female company.

They’d eaten frozen pizza and oven chips washed down by a decent bottle of white wine. Then they’d devoured an entire packet of shortbread biscuits and opened a second bottle. By the time they were halfway down that, they’d started to dissolve into helpless laughter at the slightest provocation. Jenny couldn’t remember when she’d last laughed so much, or drunk so much, for that matter. The prison job might have been good for her career advancement, but it had definitely put the kiss of death on her social life. She could hardly pop up to London for dinner and a trip to the theatre any more.

“Tea, please,” Abby said. “And is there anything green or some more fruit I could feed Rex? He’s finished the grapes and they don’t seem to have done him any harm.”

“I’m sure I can find something in the bottom of the larder, as long as he isn’t too fussy about sell-by dates.”

“He’s about 260 million years past his sell-by date, so I doubt he’ll be too fussed. And thanks for turning up the heating. I’m just guessing at what temperature he likes, but generally warmer will be better, I think.”

Rex – named somewhere down the second bottle – was currently residing in a large animal carrier in a corner of Jenny’s dining room, somewhere that couldn’t be seen through the windows or door by any casual caller. Lester had been adamant that he didn’t want anyone to know they were harbouring anything unusual, but Jenny had managed to convince him of the need to retain Abby’s goodwill, so the creature needed to be properly looked after. The girl was an animal expert, and they desperately needed anyone who might have any skills to contribute to their latest problem.

Abby had phoned her boss at the zoo, telling her that the Prison Service was willing to pay a hefty consultancy fee for her services, and as her current employment was grant funded and about to run out in the next couple of weeks, Tim wasn’t exactly in any position to argue. She would need to go home for a few changes of clothes, but other than that, she was more than happy to remain with Jenny.

“Do you think Professor Cutter and the others will be released?” Abby asked.

Jenny shook her head. There was no chance of that. From what she’d seen of Cutter, the man was a stubborn sod, and she couldn’t see any possibility of him recanting his belief in evolution any time soon, and where Cutter led, Hart and Temple would follow. But she’d bet her last pair of shoes that if offered the chance to work on the anomalies and the creatures coming through them, Cutter would jump at it. Lester had been intending to talk to him the previous night and, in her experience, the governor was a wily bastard, so the chances were high that he would have got what he wanted. She’d find out when she got into work. Her shift wasn’t due to start until 11am, so she had plenty of time for breakfast and a shower before she had to concern herself with the end result of Lester’s machinations.

“Toast and jam? I think that’s about the extent of what’s in the cupboard at the moment.”

Abby smiled. “Toast and jam’ll be great.”

Before Jenny had even got as far as dropping the rather stale bread in the toaster, she heard a sound that everyone living in Princetown was all too familiar with: the harsh noise of the klaxon horn at the prison blaring out a warning. At exactly the same moment, her mobile phone started to ring.

The caller was Lester ringing from his private number. She accepted the call quickly.

“Jenny? I’m sorry to disturb you.” She knew perfectly well that Lester wouldn’t be in the least bit sorry, not even if he’d phoned her in the middle of the night, but he clearly liked to observe the social niceties where possible. “We have something of a ‘situation’ developing here and your media skills are likely to be needed.”

“Breakout?” she asked. It was usually the thing that wound the press up the most.

“Riot,” he said succinctly. “Ryan is trying to extricate Cutter and co from the middle of C wing at the moment. The place is in lockdown, but someone is going to have leaked it to the press by now for the promise of a big back-hander, so we’re on borrowed time now.”

“I’ll be with you in ten minutes,” Jenny told him. “Until then, make sure no one deviates from the standard ‘no comment’ or I’ll mount their heads on a spike over the main gate.”

“I knew there was a reason I thought you were the right person for the job,” Lester said. “Oh, and it would be helpful if you brought Ms Maitland with you. We appear to have had an anomaly open in C wing and it’s spat out the bastard love-child of an emu and a peacock with the attitude problem of a pitbull. Captain Ryan’s words, not mine, I hasten to add.”

As Jenny scrambled into her work clothes, she relayed Lester’s words to Abby, and inside five minutes, the two women were on their way out of the door. The clouds were grey and ominous, so Jenny was happy to jump into Abby’s Mini, despite the shortness of the journey. As they were about to pull out of the cul-de-sac onto the main road, Jenny saw a car driving past at well over the legal limit, swerving across the road as the driver seemed to be trying to look behind him and talk on his mobile phone at the same time.

“Bloody idiot!” Abby said, letting the car roll back slightly until the car had gone past.

“Watch out, there’s another one coming!”

The second car was travelling even faster than the first. It careered in front of them, swiped the wing mirror off a parked car and scraped the side of another, but the driver didn’t even hesitate in his headlong dash through a 20mph zone.

“Getting a bad feeling about this,” Jenny said as Abby inched her Mini out so they could see up the road.

The tell-tale sparkle of an anomaly made Jenny’s heart sink. It had opened in the middle of the road just beyond the main entrance of the prison, but of itself that didn’t seem to be causing the panic. That accolade went to the enormous creature that was now half in and half out of the rip in time.

Two enormous grey legs, thicker than the trunk of an old oak tree, were planted firmly on either side of the road. They supported a vast chest and a long, graceful neck topped by a small, almost round head, set with two small, black eyes. Abby stamped on the brakes and fumbled with the gear stick to put the Mini into reverse.

“It’s a brontosaurus!” Jenny said, remembering the iconic dinosaur from picture books as a child.

“I think they call them apatosaurs now,” Abby said, far more calmly than Jenny felt. She succeeded in reversing the car back into the cul-de-sac, but left the engine running. “I think you’d better let Lester know we’re going to be late.”

Jenny grabbed her phone out of her bag and found Lester’s number, doing her best to hit the right entry on her contacts list despite the fact that her hands were shaking slightly. “Sir James? If you’re in your office, I think you’d better look out of the window that faces the town. We’ve got a bigger problem on our hands than the riot. A much bigger problem.”

Silence greeted her words, followed a few heartbeats later by the words, “Fucking hell.”

Despite the circumstances, Jenny couldn’t help smiling. She’d often wondered what it would take to make Sir James Lester lose his legendary ice cool demeanour and now she knew.

“Have you got any suggestions?”

“Stay out of its way. I’ll get someone out to you as soon as I can. In the meantime, I think a declaration of martial law might well be in order.”

“Are you serious?” Jenny knew her voice had just risen an octave.

“I most certainly am. We’re going to need some means of keeping people indoors and keeping the press away. I’ll phone the PM’s office now.”

Jenny’s mind boggled at the thought of that combination. A Prime Minister who sincerely believed that the world was created around 6,000 years ago was going to have to come to grips with the news of a dinosaur walking through the middle of Princetown. Presumably it had missed out on a place on the ark and had been hiding out on Dartmoor ever since. On balance, Lester was probably right. Martial law was starting to sound like an extremely good idea.

“We’re on our own,” she told Abby. “He says he’ll get some of the soldiers out to us as soon as he can. But I wouldn’t hold your breath.”

All around them, doors were opening and people were staring out at the huge creature that by now had fully emerged from the fractured light of anomaly and was beginning to advance, slowly and deliberately, down the main road.

Jenny watched in horror as it came level with the end of the cul-de-sac. A long tail, carried high in the air, not dragging on the ground the way Jenny remembered from books, lashed from side to side like an enormous, angry cat. A parked car was swept off the road and smashed into the front wall of a house, another was crushed underfoot.

People were screaming, faced with the impossible, not knowing what to do.

“Oh no!” Abby fumbled with the car door while trying to release her seat belt.

A woman pushing a double-decker pram was standing on the pavement in the path of the dinosaur, rooted to the spot. Even if the creature did nothing more than walk past her, she was still at risk of being swiped by the tail.

The crash of breaking glass and falling masonry told Jenny that the tail had just connected hard with the front of a house. If bricks and mortar stood no chance, flesh and blood would fare even worse.

Jenny followed Abby’s lead. They had to do something. Sitting in the car and watching just wasn’t an option.

“You get the woman away, I‘ll grab the pram!” Abby ordered.

Glad that she was wearing trousers and relatively sensible shoes, Jenny started to run. The heavy thud of the creature’s feet was chillingly loud and she could see the tarmac of the road starting to buckle under the weight. Abby reached the pram a few paces ahead of Jenny. She grabbed the handles and started pushing just as Jenny grabbed the young mother’s arms and hauled her backwards. Abby went in the opposite direction, crossing the road and aiming for a small alley between two cottages as Jenny did her best to haul the shocked woman into the relative safety of the cul-de-sac.

The dinosaur didn’t even seem to be aware of them. As far as Jenny could remember, the huge giants fed on plants not people, but that wasn’t much consolation when it was capable of squashing them like ants under its feet or smashing them to one side with its tail.

“The children are safe!” Jenny tried to tell the distraught woman. “They’re safe!”

But with something that size loose in Princetown, Jenny wondered for how long that statement would remain true.

For any of them.


	25. Chapter 25

Ryan hurried with the prisoners to the governor’s office, leaving his men to respond to calls from any of the other wings, should extra assistance be needed. If the wailing sound of the klaxon horn on the rooftop hadn’t been enough to alert everyone in earshot to the fact that they were needed, he’d already given the order for all off-duty soldiers and prison guards to be recalled to the prison. He hoped that would bring in some much-needed reinforcements.

“Enter!” Lester’s response to Ryan’s perfunctory knock sounded sharp and impatient.

“All present, sir,” Ryan said, as Cutter and the others followed him into the room.

“Good.” Lester looked like a man who’d already received all the bad news he wanted to hear in a lifetime. “But our problems aren’t limited to within these walls, Ryan. I’ve just spoken to Jenny. There’s an anomaly on the main road and something very large has just come through. Ms Maitland is with her, but they need some back-up.” Lester paused a moment then said, “The Prime Minister has declared martial law in the area. I have full authority to contain this situation however I think fit.”

Another knock on the door sounded and, without waiting for a reply, Lester’s secretary put her head around the door. “I’ve got the Chief Constable on the line for you, sir, he says it can’t wait.”

Lester snatched up the phone. “What’s happened now?” he demanded without any preamble or deference to the man’s rank. Lester listened intently for a minute and then said, “I’ll get some of my men up there immediately. In the meantime tell them to stay in the minibus and wait for help. Get your people to concentrate on securing the area. I don’t want any traffic incoming on any of the roads. Keep people indoors and if anyone sees anything strange, do not engage it. I repeat, do not engage it. Leave that to my men.” The phone went down none too gently. “We have a minibus full of children on the moor just above the quarry. The idiot driver swerved to avoid something in the fog and put the vehicle into a ditch. He then phoned 999 and told the operator they were being stalked by a lion. The emergency services are getting so many calls it’s a miracle that one even got through.”

“It’s the Andrewsarchus again,” Cutter declared. “They’ll have to be careful. That thing’s strong enough to smash the glass on a windscreen if it wants to.”

“Then let’s hope it finds something else to distract it,” Lester said. “Ryan, take whoever you want and get up there. We need those children brought to safety or the press will have even more of a field day that they’ll be having already when all this gets out. Cutter, I’m relying on you to come up with something to help Ms Lewis and Ms Maitland. Will you give me your word that you won’t just do a disappearing act the minute you’re outside these walls?”

“Do you even need to ask?” Cutter said, his face betraying his anger.

Lester didn’t flinch. “Yes, I do. I can’t make you any promises, Cutter, and you know it, but you have knowledge I need. I can’t afford you taking off in the thick of this.”

“I’ll do everything I can,” Cutter said simply. “You can have my word on that. Just give me yours that you’ll do your best for Stephen and Connor when all this is over. And Danny.”

“I’ll do my best for all of you,” Lester snapped. “Now get out there and start dealing with dinosaurs!”

“Hart, you’re with me,” Ryan said quickly. “Sir, I’ll send Lyle or Stringer out with the others.” He glanced at Cutter and Quinn. “Make sure you do as you’re told. You’re there to help, not make matters worse.”

Without waiting for a response, Ryan gestured to Stephen Hart to follow him as he hurried out of the room. He was already issuing a series of orders into his radio as he jogged down the corridor, telling four of his men to meet him in the main courtyard.

* * * * *

The soldiers piled into one of the prison’s black Range Rovers. Stephen joined the others in the back as Finn took the wheel, with Ryan in the other front seat. They had enough weaponry with them to start a minor war and, at an order from Ryan, Stephen had been promptly equipped with a SIG Sauer P226 and a thigh holster, plus one of the equipment vests the soldiers wore and one of their radio headsets.

The main gate let them through, after several vehicles containing off-duty soldiers and guards had streamed in. As Finn practically did a handbrake turn onto the road, Stephen looked back out of the window and in the distance saw the shape of something almost unbelievably huge. The only thing he could think of that could have been that size was an apatosaurus or maybe a diplodocus. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how Cutter and the others would deal with something that size, but for the moment, that wasn’t his problem. He had an Andrewsarchus to worry about; a creature that had the strongest jaws ever to have evolved on a land mammal.

Stephen dropped the clip out of the SIG, checked it was fully loaded, and slammed it back in to place, before wriggling into the holster and tightening the straps around his loose prison-issue trousers. The equipment vest held spare magazines, a couple of flares, a flashlight, a taser, a pepper spray and an extendable baton. It settled on his shoulders in a comforting weight over one of the black jackets that had been stuffed into his hands by Finn as they’d sprinted for the vehicle.

The green-eyed soldier they called Blade told him there was a spare M4 rifle for him in the metal case in the back of the vehicle. Ryan had clearly decided that he could be trusted. But in truth, the captain’s men were stretched to breaking point now, both in the prison and in the town, so beggars certainly couldn’t be choosers. Ryan hadn’t asked Stephen for any promises, but the fact that he was being allowed weapons spoke volumes for the trust the captain was prepared to place in him and Stephen had no intention of abusing that.

As they left the prison behind, mist closed around them, forcing Finn to rein in his breakneck speed or risk putting the vehicle off the road. Stephen clipped his seat belt into place and hung on for the ride.

* * * * *

“Fucking shit!”

Finn slammed on the brakes and brought the Range Rover to a shuddering halt. It slewed to one side but stayed on the road. In front of them, wreathed in mist, Stephen could see the wreckage of three cars, with several people standing in the middle of the road, arguing the toss, arms waving and voices raised.

Stephen couldn’t work out how the hell they’d managed it, but one of the vehicles had ended up on its roof in the middle of the road and two others seemed to have managed to get embedded in each other in a way that didn’t look easy to extricate either of them from. Two people were sitting by the side of the road, looking dazed. One of them had blood running from a gash on their head and the other was cradling an arm that looked broken.

Ditzy, the medic with the unlikely and extremely inaccurate nickname, took a quick look at both of them while Finn shouted the rest of the group into submission and Ryan got on the phone to Lester, asking for another vehicle to be sent out from the prison or from the police to pick up the motorists.

“Get the kit, we tab in from here,” Ryan ordered, after it had became obvious that the ditches on either side of the road were too deep for their vehicle to traverse and that it would take too long to get the wreckage shifted.

The captain ordered the irate motorists to stay with their cars. Stephen wasn’t surprised that the presence of armed soldiers quickly quelled any dissent. It would have taken a brave man to argue with Ryan when the captain used that tone of voice and Finn had already given them the full benefit of his extensive vocabulary.

Blade tossed an M4 carbine at him followed by four spare clips, which Stephen quickly stowed in the pockets of his tactical vest, and then they were jog-trotting along the road at a fast but sustainable pace. Hard labour in the prison had been a poor replacement for the long runs Stephen had been used to taking, but he’d done his best to remain in good shape, and he was pleased that he hadn’t let his exercise regime slide too far.

The mist closed in around them like an enveloping grey blanket, shutting out both sight and sound. The road snaked ahead of them, climbing steadily as they passed the wide expanse of Merrivale Quarry on the right, the site of an earlier attack by the Andrewsarchus. Stephen drew in a deep breath as his long legs ate up the ground. He moved to the front of the group, next to Ryan.

“We’re going up against one of the most effective predators since T. rex walked the earth,” Stephen said, keeping his tone matter-of-fact.

“The lads like a challenge.”

Stephen grinned, despite their situation. The captain was an easy man to like. Stephen just wished they’d met in different circumstances.

A sudden scream pierced the air. A woman, afraid, very afraid.

They redoubled their pace. Stephen estimated that they were no more than 100 metres from their goal. A sudden gust of wind thinned the mist and Stephen could see, up ahead, a minibus, canted to one side, looking like it was leaning on a large granite boulder by the side of the road, its front wheel off the road and in one of the drainage ditches that he’d helped to dig out during one of the work parties on the moor.

The sound of breaking glass was the next thing he heard as a huge, brindled shape reared up and smashed the front windscreen with two enormous hooved feet that made extremely effective clubs.

“Jesus fucking Christ will you look at the jaws on that bastard!” Finn exclaimed, in total defiance of the anti-blasphemy laws.

“Hold your fire!” Ryan ordered quickly.

From their angle of approach, any bullets – even if they struck their intended target – would go straight through the creature and into a bus full of children. Stephen could now hear the sound of screaming from inside the wrecked vehicle. The woman’s voice was joined by those of the children and the van was rocking backwards and forwards as those inside fought to get away from the massive jaws capable of rending flesh and metal all too easily.

As Stephen stared at the unfolding scene, he could see a man’s body in the road in front of the bus; the bus driver, prostrate in the inelegant sprawl of death, blood pooling around him on the road.

“Hart, this would be a good time for some suggestions,” Ryan said quietly, as they all came to a halt about 20 metres away.

“We need to get it away from the bus so we can get a clear shot at it,” Stephen said. “The problem is that it knows there’s plenty of prey in there. It can smell their fear, and the movement’ll be attracting it like a cat to a budgie cage.”

“Fucking big kitty cat,” commented Finn.

Stephen weighed up the odds, drew in a deep breath and ran. He stopped on the edge of the moor and yelled loudly, “Oi, you! Fur face!”

The Andrewsarchus turned to look at him, its heavy jaws open, blood smeared around the long muzzle.

Stephen waved his arms about, yelled again, and dived into the mist, pinning his hopes on the soldiers’ reaction times.

“Hart, you fucking idiot!”

Stephen just hoped Ryan’s words wouldn’t end up as his epitaph.


	26. Chapter 26

“Do we get guns?” Danny demanded, as the soldiers were kitting themselves up in the armoury, grabbing extra weapons and shoving ammunition pouches into the pockets of their equipment vests.

Lieutenant Lyle gave him an appraising stare and then nodded to a rack of weapons. “Take your pick.”

Danny helped himself to a semi-automatic pistol and a short-barrelled sub-machine gun that looked like a Heckler & Koch MP5, a gun he was familiar with from his police training, and several 30 round magazines for it, plus several for the SIG pistol.

Cutter shook his head and shoved his hands into the pockets of the black jacket one of the soldiers had handed to him. Connor looked slightly miffed that no one had offered him a gun, but Danny didn’t fancy the chances of the lad doing anything other than blowing his own foot off, so he certainly wasn’t going to press the point with the hard-eyed lieutenant.

At a nod from Lyle, they moved off at a trot towards the main gate, followed by four soldiers plucked from the middle of the chaos in the prison to ride shotgun.

Danny had lain in his bunk more lonely nights than he cared to remember fantasising about the day he could finally walk out of the prison gates, under the monumental stone arch that led to the outer yard, and back to freedom. The archway was inscribed with the words Parcere Subjectis, roughly translated as ‘spare the vanquished’. Not that there’d been a lot of sparing going on during his time inside.

A shiver ran down Danny’s spine as he passed under the arch. This certainly wasn’t how he’d imagined this moment would be like; not with a pistol strapped to his thigh, carrying a machine pistol and on a promise not to do a bunk. He really did need his head examining. Danny caught Cutter’s eyes and got a rueful grin in return. He clearly wasn’t the only one thinking along those lines.

Lyle took point and set off down the road into Princetown at a run. Danny could already hear screams, so it didn’t look like they’d have far to go. The anomaly was on a slight bend in the road, glittering in the light drizzle that had started to fall, turning lazily in the air, looking like a massive, fractured diamond. They skirted around it, and Danny could feel the magnetic pull it was exerting over every piece of metal he was carrying. He clamped the MP5 to his chest and ran on. At his side, Connor slowed down, his mouth agape in wonder. Danny could see that he wanted to linger, to study the impossible, trying to wrap his clever mind around the thought that creatures from the past could simply walk into the present through one of these beautiful but terrifying rips in time.

Danny gave Connor a gentle push. “Come on, genius. You can stand and stare later.”

Connor shot him a quick smile. “It’s bloody amazing.”

The thought of the gateway to the past had eclipsed everything else in Connor’s agile mind, even the enormity that they were now outside the walls that had become central to their existence. With a regretful look behind him, Connor ran on, panting from the unaccustomed exertion.

Lyle ordered two of the soldiers to stay behind with the anomaly and shoot anything that tried to come through. Cutter’s frown was water off a duck’s back so far as Lyle was concerned.

“We don’t want trouble behind us as well as in front,” Lyle retorted.

His reasoning was sound, even though Cutter clearly didn’t like it.

“Definitely herbivore,” Connor commented, diffusing the tension by pointing at the half uprooted conifer that their visitor has snacked on in its progression down the road and towards the town.

“Doesn’t stop it being dangerous,” Lyle commented. “Read somewhere that about 40 people a year are killed by cows, and they eat grass.”

Danny envied the man’s ability to run and talk at the same time, sounding like he was doing nothing more than strolling down the road. Danny had done his best to keep his fitness up in prison, but there was no way he could match the soldiers at this pace. Connor and Cutter were already looking rather red in the face.

The trail of wreckage on the road told them they were getting nearer to their goal. Something had taken out large chunks of the stone wall on their left, and a car was crumpled up in the middle of the road, its driver crouched down by the side of the road, shaking like a leaf. The soldiers barely spared him a glance as they ran on. The man was alive. Help would have to come later, for now they had other priorities.

Danny skirted around the scattered remains of a section of wall and almost ended up tripping over Lyle as the lieutenant came to a sudden halt in the middle of the road.

“He’s a big bugger,” Lyle remarked as the rest their small group rounded the last corner at a run, arriving in time to see the thing that Connor had referred to as a diplodocus send a parked car crashing into the front window of a row of cream-fronted stone cottages with one flick of its long, powerful tail.

Neither the pictures in the books he’d enjoyed as a kid – before possession of them had become a criminal offence – nor their brief encounter with the creature up on the moor had done anything to prepare Danny for the reality of seeing something as huge as this in the flesh. It was as tall as a double-decker bus and easily longer than three of them put together. It towered over the cottages, making them look like something from a miniature village. The three storey flats opposite were more in keeping with its scale.

Danny could see frightened faces pressed up against windows, watching as the great beast lumbered slowly down the road, its small head carried in an almost straight line from the tip of a tail that was clearly being used as a counter-weight. Some way ahead, Danny saw a flash of bleached blonde hair and realised that they’d found Abby Maitland, the girl from the zoo. With her was a dark-haired woman that Danny recognised from the prison: Lester’s head of PR, Jenny Lewis.

Abby grabbed hold of the other woman’s hand and started to run towards them, keeping close to the front wall of the cottages. The dinosaur paid them no attention at all. The zoo keeper took one look at him and the armed soldiers and her eyes narrowed.

“You’d better not use any of that lot,” she said, sweeping a hand at their weaponry. She was clearly a woman after Cutter’s heart when it came to the creatures.

“Have you got any better suggestions?” Lyle demanded. “From the look of it, it’s capable of flattening most of this town and barely noticing.”

The sound of the dinosaur’s tail hitting the front of a house reinforced the soldier’s statement.

“You can’t shoot it, man!” Cutter said in outrage.

Lyle sighed heavily. “You’re probably right about that. We’d need a sodding rocket launcher to stand a chance of taking it down, and they aren’t standard issue in UK prisons – yet. OK, work with me on this, Prof. I need a plan and I need it now. You’re the bloody dinosaur expert, so give me some ideas.”

“We need to turn it around,” Cutter said, watching the creature lumber along the road with something approaching awe on his face.

“How can we turn a diplodocus around?” Connor said, his agile brain clearly already starting to wrestle with the problem.

“I thought you said it was an apatasomething?” the dark-haired woman said to Abby.

Abby rolled her eyes. “Not exactly my specialist subject, Jenny. Why, are you already planning the press statement?”

“I doubt that detail will make it into print,” Jenny said. “Lyle, what can we do about the people? If it gets much further down this road it’ll be coming close to the school.”

The look on Lyle’s face said the soldier was already well aware of that fact.

“Fire,” Cutter said. “Most animals will do anything to avoid fire.”

Lyle grinned. “You’re starting to earn your keep, Prof, I like it.”

* * * * *

“Get everyone in those cottages into the back rooms,” Lyle ordered. “This is going to break a few windows when it goes up.”

Working as fast as they could, using cars where keys had been left behind in their ignitions or in a few other cases, making use of skills Danny had picked up in his teenage years and then honed where necessary in his time in the police, they created a hastily erected barricade of cars across the road, directly in the path of the diplodocus/apatasomething/whatever the fuck it was.

A long scarf donated by Jenny Lewis was dangling from the fuel tank of one of the cars and Lyle was standing directly in the path of the advancing dinosaur, a cigarette lighter in his hand, ready to set fire to the scarf as soon as he received the signal from Cutter and Abby that they’d evacuated as many people as possible.

“I’d fuck off, if I were you, Quinn,” Lyle advised, standing his ground without flinching, even though Danny could swear he could feel the ground shivering as the dinosaur advanced on them.

Legs the size of tree trunks held up its almost unimaginable bulk, bending slightly at the knee with every step. The small head was looking towards them and Danny could see a line of what looked like spines running down the long neck, up and over the massive shoulders, along its broad back and down to the thin, whip-like point of its tail, lashing to and fro like that of an angry cat.

“Mam always said I was too stubborn for me own good,” Danny said.

The small head lowered and took a bite out of a bush in someone’s garden. The bush promptly came up by the roots.

“My theory, which belongs to me, is mine…” Lyle muttered.

Danny grinned, despite the creature that was getting nearer by the second. “All brontosauruses are thin at one end, much, much thicker in the middle, and then thin again at the far end…”

“We’ll do the rest of the parrot sketch later,” the lieutenant said with a grin. “Prof, now would be a bloody good time to tell me that I can light the blue touch paper!”

“Aye, go for it, lad!” Cutter yelled.

Lyle put the small flame from the lighter to the petrol soaked scarf. They waited for a moment to be sure that the material had held the flame, and then they ran up the road, putting as much distance between themselves and the car as they could, and dived over a wall into a garden, their arms over their heads. Danny had time to count to ten in his head before a deep boom told him that the flame had reached the petrol tank. Debris rained down around them as the explosion blew the glass out of the car windscreen and shattered the windows in the houses closest to the explosion. The other cars around the epicentre of the fire started to burn as well and it wouldn’t be long before they blew up as well.

“Nice one, squirrel,” Danny said appreciatively. “Takes me back to being at school.”

“I thought you were a copper?”

“Set a thief to catch a thief. Used to enjoy nickin’ cars on a Saturday night. Never got caught, either. The second one will blow any time now…. Stay down!” Danny yelled.

A second explosion and then a third sent columns of greasy black smoke billowing upwards in the damp air. The three cars formed a blazing barrier across the road, providing fire, smoke and the deeply unpleasant smell of an engine fire. Danny watched as the diplo-apatathing came to a halt, its head weaving from side to side as the smoke reached its nostrils.

“Connor, is it true that they’ve got a brain the size of a pea located in their arses?” Danny asked, speaking into the radio mic.

“Got absolutely no idea, mate,” Connor replied cheerily. “But I think we’re about to find out.”

The dinosaur lowered its head and took another step forward.

Cloying black smoke wreathed around its head. Danny realised he was holding his breath and not just because of the combined stink of burning petrol, diesel and rubber. If this didn’t stop the creature in its tracks, Danny had no idea what would, and it looked very much like Cutter and Connor were fresh out of ideas as well.

Then the small head turned away and, like an oil tanker starting to manoeuvre, slowly, very slowly, the dinosaur began to change direction, flattening the low wall beside a wide strip of grass in front of the flats, stomping on the wet earth as it moved towards fresher air.

“Keep on going, you great big bugger,” Danny said encouragingly. “You don’t want to stay here. Trust your uncle Danny. You want to go back home, don’t you?”

“Let’s fucking hope he does,” Lyle said. “We certainly don’t want him to end up liking it here. Let’s go hotwire another car, Quinn, he might need some more encouragement to keep going in the right direction.”

“Helluva fucking insurance bill we’re racking up.”

Lyle’s grin was wolfish in the light of the flames. “The guv’nor’s declared martial law, mate. That gives us carte blanche to blow up as much as we like.”

Danny nudged Lyle and pointed to a black BMW parked in front of the flats. “Always fancied torching a Beamer.”

Lyle waved one hand expansively. “Be my guest, Quinn.”


	27. Chapter 27

Ryan’s words rang in his ears as Stephen dashed away from the road and onto the moor, certain that the Andrewsarchus’ instincts wouldn’t let it ignore prey. As smart moves went, his was well into minus figures but he was relying on the soldiers’ instincts being equally as well-honed as those of the thing that was now guaranteed to be chasing him.

In a few long strides, the firm ground beneath his feet gave way to short, springy grass and tussocks of heather. Stephen could hear the thud of the hooved toes on the ground. If Ryan and his men didn’t bring the creature down soon, Stephen was fucked. The mist was already starting to close in around him and they’d be losing line of sight with frightening rapidity.

“Verify your target!” Ryan’s voice again, icy calm despite the vehemence of his words.

A heartbeat later, the first shots rang out. Stephen kept running, feinting to the right and then twisting left as he heard the creature’s hooves hitting the earth behind him.

“Get down, Hart!”

Stephen’s adrenaline levels soared but he obeyed the instruction, throwing himself flat on the wet grass. A rock dug painfully into his knee but he bit back his yelp of pain.

The volley of shots was deafening. Ryan’s men were playing for keeps, just as they’d done with the things that had created havoc in the middle of C wing. Stephen stayed down, not wanting to get into their line of fire as several weapons fired at the same time on semi-automatic. He rolled, feeling his borrowed M4 digging into his ribs, and ended up against a large boulder.

The Andrewsarchus had taken multiple hits but it wasn’t down yet. Stephen thumbed the safety off his weapon and fired a three-round burst into its head from damn nearly point blank range, whilst lying on his side on the grass. The creature dropped like a stone. Stephen closed his eyes and drew in a shaky breath. He was still alive, although whether he’d stay that way when Ryan caught up with him was anyone’s guess.

“You fucking idiot!” Ryan said again, when he caught up, looking down at Stephen, his voice low, in control and very, very angry.

“Sorry about that.” Stephen came up onto his knees and winced at the stab of pain. His breathing was ragged and the blood still pounded through his head as he took in the fact that his crazy stunt had come off. “But you couldn’t fire on it that close to the minibus.”

“I would have thought of something,” Ryan said, his voice softening slightly as he held his hand down to Stephen and hauled him to his feet. “Something that didn’t involve suicide by an ugly bastard with a name that I can’t even fucking spell.” The soldier’s large hand squeezed his firmly. “Don’t ever pull a fucking stunt like that again.”

Stephen closed his eyes for a moment and sucked in a shuddering breath as the enormity of what he’d just done hit home with the force of a boot to his solar plexus. For an all too brief moment he felt Ryan’s arm around his shoulders, the tough soldier an unlikely comforter, then a yell from Blade broke the moment before Stephen could even begin to relax.

“Boss! There’s something out there!”

“There fucking would be,” Ryan growled, his arm dropping away from Stephen. “Come on, I don’t like the way this mist is closing in. We’re sitting fucking ducks out here if there are more of those buggers around.”

Stephen forced his shaky legs into a jog trot as they made their way back to the road.

The green-eyed soldier who was generally reckoned to be an even bigger psycho than most of the inmates of Dartmoor Prison shot him a feral grin. “And they say I’m crazy,” he said appreciatively. “Nice stunt, Hart.”

“Don’t fucking encourage him,” Ryan retorted. “What did you see?”

“Something bigger than that thing, hairless, grey-green, then the mist closed in.”

Stephen immediately thought of the scutosaurus and it was clear that Ryan was thinking along the same lines when the captain said, “Big, lumbering thing, head a bit like a giant turtle?”

Blade shook his head. “Looked like a predator to me.”

“Takes one to know one,” Finn muttered, earning him a sharp look from Ryan that did nothing at all to quell the young soldier. “I saw it too, boss. It definitely wasn’t like the other thing we saw.”

A deep throated roar confirmed Finn’s observation as something charged at them out of the mist. Stephen flung himself sideways, dragging Ryan with him, as some preternatural danger sense warned him which direction their attacker was going to take. Blade did the same with Finn, but was almost immediately back on his feet, a long-bladed knife in his hand as he flung himself at the creature, slashing at its leg. For a moment, Stephen wondered what the hell he was playing at, using a knife instead of his rifle, but then the beast crashed to the ground and he realised that Blade had somehow managed to hamstring it, hacking through the thick grey hide in one vicious stroke.

The creature thrashed on the ground, bellowing in rage, probably not even knowing why it couldn’t get back on its feet. A volley of shots from Ditzy finished it off.

Ryan stared down at the corpse in amazement. “What the fucking hell is that?” he demanded.

“Dead,” pronounced Ditzy with a grim smile. “More to the point, are there likely to be any more like it out there?”

Stephen stared down at the creature. He didn’t have Connor’s encyclopaedic knowledge of prehistoric animals, but something about this one was ringing a bell. A very ominous bell. One of the last papers he’d worked on with Cutter, before the inmates took over the asylum and made their research illegal, had been on the prehistoric killing machines otherwise known as gorgonopsids. He’d never expected to meet one in the flesh, but he had to admit that the corpse lying on the road in front of him was ticking all the right boxes.

It was about the size of a rhinoceros, with jaws similar to that of the dead Andrewsarchus set with strong teeth, perfect for seizing prey. He went down on his good knee in the road and used the barrel of his rifle to push its jaws apart so he could peer into its mouth. He switched on the torch attachment on the M4 and continued his examination. A vaulted palate that would allow it to breathe while still hanging onto its prize confirmed his fears. That was one of the things Cutter had extrapolated from the fossil record.

“I’m starting to really dislike dinosaurs,” Ryan said, staring down at the enormous carcass. “Hart, why are you getting up close and personal with the bastard thing?”

“Strictly speaking, it’s not a dinosaur,” Stephen said, standing up. “It’s late-Permian, same as the Scutosaurus – the thing with the turtle-like head,” he clarified, for the benefit of the soldiers who hadn’t seen the other one. “Anything before the Triassic isn’t a dinosaur. And fortunately these things didn’t survive the end-Permian extinction. It’s a gorgonopsid.”

“Extinction sounds good,” Ryan said. “I like the sound of extinction. I can even spell it. Now tell me something useful, Hart. Did they hunt in packs?”

A very cold shiver ran through Stephen’s guts as the conclusions of Cutter’s paper came very forcibly back to mind. “Yes,” he said. “I think they did.”

* * * * *

Ryan slammed a fresh clip in his rifle and, not for the first time since dinosaurs had started to complicate his life, wished that his men could call on something with slightly more stopping power than a 5.56mm bullet. With both the M4s and the H&K MP5s, you had to rely on laying down enough lead to hit something vital, and against a target as large as the ones they seemed to be up against now, that moved fast and unpredictably, that was easier said than done. He’d seen poachers hunt elephants with AK47s, but it really wasn’t recommended. Not if you wanted to stay alive very long.

He had a minibus full of kids on his hands plus a teacher who was scared out of her wits and was probably going to be more unreliable than the youngsters, with at least 500 metres between him and their own transport. “Finn, Kermit, get back to the Range Rover and shunt those wrecks off the road if you can. We’re going to have to tow the minibus out of there and hope to hell it hasn’t broken an axle.”

“On it, boss.” Finn replied.

“Ditz, see if you can get that bloody woman to stop yelling and see if the kids are all right. Blade, Hart, tell me if anything moves out there.” Ryan pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialled Lester’s private line again. The governor answered after barely one ring. “Sir, we’ve taken down the thing that had a go at your car – or one of them anyway – but something else has turned up and its equally bad news. Hart says whatever it is hunts in packs. This isn’t looking too healthy.”

“Becker’s on his way up to you,” Lester replied. “Stringer and Wilder have got their hands full at the moment. We’ve had another anomaly open up in G wing, with more of those bird-things. The only good news is that they took a fancy to Gordie Frazer.”

“No loss,” Ryan said automatically. “I’ll keep you posted, sir.”

The sound of another scream made Ryan jerk his head to one side, trying to get a fix on the direction of the noise.

“It’s back down by the cars,” Stephen said quickly.

“Then Finn and Kermit will have to deal with it. We need to make sure nothing gets to these kids.” He had a daughter the same age as some of the children in the van. He was damned if something that didn’t know when to stay extinct was going to get to them on his watch.

Inside the minibus, the woman abruptly stopped screaming. He had a feeling Ditzy had probably applied Special Forces-style therapy to her. He looked down at the blood pooling on the road. The body of the driver was a mess, but there was nothing they could do for him.

“Hart, grab his feet. We need to shift him. I don’t want the smell attracting any more of those things over here. Blade, cover us.”

Moving the body was grim work, the man’s guts had been split open and his head had been crushed like a split watermelon, but Stephen Hart’s intense blue eyes never wavered as they half-dragged, half-carried the body of the driver over to the corpse of the Andrewsarchus.

“You might like to know that Gordie Frazer won’t be playing his nasty games with anyone else,” he remarked as they made their way back to the road. “Lester said there’s been another anomaly inside the prison.”

“Can’t say I’m sorry to see the back of him,” Hart said, his voice hard and emotionless.

“You weren’t the first and you wouldn’t have been the last,” Ryan said.

“And here was me thinking I was special.”

Despite their situation, Ryan grinned and got a ghost of a smile in return. The man was tough underneath the pretty boy looks and he had fucking fast reactions, judging by the way he’d shoved Ryan out of the way when the other thing had come barrelling out of the mist. If they were going to have any more of this sort of thing to deal with, Ryan wanted Hart on his team. They needed to know what they were going up against that and he wasn’t going to get that sort of knowledge from anyone who believed the world had been created 6,000 years ago.

A volley of rifle shots sounded from further down the road, and then a louder blast from much closer told Ryan that Blade was vigilant and that they were in trouble – again. An even louder roar came at them out of the mist and another one of the non-dinosaur things came charging at them. It moved as fast as an angry rhino, brushing Blade out of the way, sending him sprawling in the road as it charged directly at the minibus, butting it hard with its head. Screaming came from inside the bus and it slipped further into the ditch at the side of the road.

Ryan dropped to one knee, flicking his rifle onto full automatic. This was not an occasion for finesse.

Blade rolled to one side and came up firing.

Hart did the same, but he wasn’t firing on the animal that had head-butted the bus, he was shooting out into the fog.

To the accompaniment of screams from inside the minibus and the sound of breaking glass as Ditzy rammed the barrel of his M4 through a window and started firing as well, Ryan let his mind empty of everything but the need to stay alive and stop their attackers getting at the terrified children.

He could see two of the beasts closing in on them and could hear the roars from at least one more, further down the road. With Blade on one side and Stephen on the other, Ryan set his back against the minibus and faced out into the fog. One of the creatures went past them at a fast run and moments later, he heard the sound of flesh tearing. It had taken the bait.

“Leave it to me,” Blade said, pulling his Fairbairn Sykes fighting knife out again.

Ryan had no intention of doing anything else other than leaving him to it. Blade was a mad fucker who’d get his rocks off in action that would have everyone else crapping themselves, but he was nowhere near as reckless as some people thought. And Ryan and Stephen had enough to worry about.

The gorgonopsid in front of them had lowered its head and was about to charge. They’d already emptied nearly a full clip each into it and somehow it was still on its feet.

At his side, Stephen brought his borrowed M4 up to his shoulder again and put a three round burst straight into one eye. The gorgonopsid staggered and started to buckle at the knees. Ryan conserved his ammunition, waiting for several heartbeats to see if Stephen had been successful in taking it down. He had no idea how many of the fuckers were out there, and they didn’t have an endless number of clips available. They hadn’t been expecting to fight a fucking war.

The creature toppled slowly to one side as a short burst from Blade’s rifle sounded close by. Ryan hoped that meant he’d just finished his off. The noise from further down the road had abated as well.

If they were lucky, they’d be able to start evacuating the kids soon.

He stepped away from the minibus, about to congratulate Stephen on his shooting when a gust of wind parted the mist just enough for him to see a third gorgonopsid bearing down on him at the speed of a galloping horse.

This really wasn’t turning out to be their lucky day.


	28. Chapter 28

“Sir James, I really don’t think this is a good idea.” Oliver Leek looked uncharacteristically nervous as he fussed with the end of his tie and hovered by the doorway.

“If it’s any consolation, Leek, I entirely agree with you, but I refuse to skulk in my rooms while this prison burns,” Lester declared, sweeping past his deputy into the outer office, where even his normally imperturbable secretary was looking slightly concerned. “Miss Wickes, if the Prime Minister telephones, do feel free to irritate him with repeated use of the word ‘dinosaur’. I fail to see why we should be the only ones to have to suffer in this situation.”

Lester knew perfectly well that the sensible course of action was to remain well away from any of the trouble spots in the prison, but he had no intention of going down in the annals of the prison service as the governor who led from the rear during a riot. Although quite frankly, given what was happening, he imagined that the Prime Minister would be quite happy to see the whole place go up in flames along with all the prisoners, probably with him included. It would lead to fewer inconvenient eye witness reports to have to deal with. But Lester had no intention of providing that ill-educated buffoon in 10 Downing Street with any sort of scapegoat.

He took the radio Lorraine handed to him and made his way down the corridor. The various sirens had been silenced when it became clear that almost the entire prison was in an uproar. He’d given the order an hour ago to withdraw all ordinary guards from the wings. The soldiers had the training and the weaponry to deal with this sort of situation. At least they could be relied on to keep casualties to a minimum, but there were some among the guards that he didn’t trust to not to use this as an excuse to pay off old scores. The recent riots in Brixton prison had demonstrated quite how ugly things could get in such circumstances. Fifty dead prisoners in retaliation for one dead guard could hardly be described as a proportionate response, despite Leek’s views on the matter.

According to the reports Lester had received, C wing was quiet now. After the anomaly had closed, he had agreed to send in medical help in return for assurances of good behaviour. It had been a risk, but by then the prisoners had been too shocked to give trouble. After ordering the removal of the carcasses of the birds, and the evacuation of the dead and wounded prisoners, the rest had agreed to return to their cells. He’d got the impression from the guards that they would actually feel safer there.

Fires in both A and B wings had been reasonably swiftly brought under control, without the need to call in outside assistance, for which Lester was thankful. The one good thing about a brick monstrosity originally built to house prisoners of war during the Napoleonic Wars was that the fabric of the building didn’t burn easily, and isolated fires had been extinguished before they could spread, although he’d been told several prisoners were suffering from smoke inhalation. In his opinion, a fair price to pay for setting their cells on fire.

Resistance in G wing had largely collapsed after the death of Gordie Frazer, one casualty of the whole affair that Lester would certainly not lose any sleep over. Captain Wilder was now in the process of restoring order there, which left D wing as the main trouble spot. On Lester’s earlier orders, Captain Stringer had withdrawn, leaving the inmates to stew in their own over-heated juices. Lester wanted to see what the situation was like on the ground before taking any decision regarding the evacuation of anyone wounded in the riot. He’d known prisoners use their own injured as a means of luring guards into their hands and he had no intention of falling for any such tricks.

Yells and cat-calls were the first things he heard as he unlocked one of the outer sets of doors, with Leek pacing at his heels like a well-trained dog.

Captain Stringer met him just inside the doors. “Five guards injured, one seriously,” Stringer said without preamble. “That lot’re claiming they’ve got wounded in there, but they won’t bring them out where we can see them.”

“Then the assumption is that they’re lying,” Lester said, staring down the length of the cavernous inner hall.

Stringer had withdrawn his men to a safe distance, ensuring they were out of range of any thrown missiles. Tin mugs, broken pieces of furniture and other items that had been used as projectiles littered the floor of the no man’s land in between them and the main part of the wing. Tables had been upturned to form barricades and behind them, prisoners milled around, many with makeshift weapons in their hands.

“They’re not in any mood to negotiate,” Stringer said, cradling his rifle in his arms like a favoured child.

“Fortunate, because neither am I,” Lester said. He took a pace forwards, away from the hard-eyed soldiers and watchful guards. Addressing the prisoners crouching behind the tables, he raised his voice and called: “If you have wounded, bring them out. I will guarantee them safe passage.”

His offer was greeted by a few shouts of ‘go fuck yourself’ and similar pleasantries, punctuated by a hail of missiles and some choicer suggestions that made even the notoriously foul-mouthed Stringer look amused.

“I’m afraid my grandmother died some years ago, so will be unable to take up your kind offers, gentlemen,” Lester replied. The encounter was developing on standard lines, and he was fully intending to simply starve the riot of oxygen by simply refusing to engage any further with the rioters until lack of food brought them to heel. “Do let me know when you’re in a more reasonable frame of mind.”

“That’ll be sometime never,” Stringer muttered.

“You are no doubt correct in that prediction, Captain, but unless they resort to cannibalism, they’ll have to start behaving themselves at some point. They’ll run out of steam, they usually do.”

A yell of surprise from one of the guards caused Stringer to wheel around and exclaim, “Buggering fuck!”

Lester turned on his heel. Their way off the wing was blocked by an enormous ball of fractured light, spinning slowly in the air.

Stringer clamped his rifle hard to his chest as various metal mugs went flying through the air, tugged into the broken light by the same magnetism that was currently trying to drag his extremely expensive Mont Blanc fountain pen out of his pocket. Lester caught it just as the clip tugged itself free of the material of his jacket. He had no intention of losing that to one of Cutter’s so-called rips in time.

“Get back!” Stringer ordered. “And hold your fire!”

A moment later, the thing shimmered like a heat haze and a large head burst through. Three very distinctive horns were set in front of a wide, flared bony ruffle around a thick neck. As it stepped out of the anomaly, Lester could see that the creature stood taller than any of the soldiers, at least two metres high at the shoulder, possibly more. Thick grey hide, like that of an elephant, covered an equally heavy body.

Lester very much hoped that he wasn’t gaping in shock. He prided himself on his ability to take anything in his stride, including the appearance of something that had featured very prominently in any number of banned picture books for children and adults alike. His own children had even been able to name this particular dinosaur by the age of four so he didn’t need to be a professor of palaeontology to know that his prison had just been invaded by a triceratops.

“No one move a fucking muscle!” Stringer yelled. “The first person to open fire without a direct order’ll be eating my shit for a week.”

The sudden silence was punctuated by a plastic chair flying through the air and hitting the bars behind them.

“Do that again and I’m opening the fucking door and letting it come for you!” Stringer didn’t turn around or take his eyes off the creature.

“I’m not convinced it will fit through the doors,” Lester said in an undertone.

“Maybe not, but with an arse full of lead I’m willing to bet it’ll give it a good go,” Stringer replied. “When I give the word, sir, I want you to walk backwards, very slowly to the door. Keep your eyes on it. If it looks like it’s going to charge, run like hell, but otherwise keep moving slowly.”

“When did you become an expert on dinosaurs, Captain?”

“About 30 seconds ago, sir. Do you have any alternative ideas?”

“None that immediately spring to mind. However, I do suggest we get any personnel closer to the door out of here first.”

“You’re my prime responsibility, sir.”

“Yes, but I venture to suggest I am more likely to hold my nerve than Mr Leek.”

Stringer shot him a hard look, but it was clear that the soldier didn’t disagree with Lester’s view.

“All right, listen up, gentlemen! Evans, get that door open and keep it that way until we’ve evacuated this section. Mr Leek, I want you to move very slowly back towards the door. Don’t even think about bolting as soon as it’s open. If you do, I guarantee I’ll tear your right arm off at the shoulder and stuff it slowly up your arse so that you can scratch your tonsils from the inside. Do I make myself clear?”

Lester turned his head just far enough to see Leek’s face. His deputy looked like he was about to lose control of his bladder. His adam’s apple bobbed uncertainly as he took a step backwards, then another.

The triceratops tilted its head to one side, beaked mouth open almost as if it was tasting the air. It took a step further into the room and let out a lowing bellow, making it sound like a giant cow, even if it didn’t look like one. The prisoners scrambled further back behind their barricades, and Lester could hear the sound of cell doors slamming as quite a few of them decided that discretion was very definitely the better part of valour. It took another couple of steps into the prison until the entirety of its considerable bulk was outside the shimmering anomaly.

Lester could see its small tail lashing from side to side as though it was swatting flies, and then the tail lifted in the air as the creature started to prove that its resemblance to cows was indeed quite pronounced.

“I want as many people on the other side of those bars as possible, now!” Stringer ordered. “But walk, don’t run! Smudge, Davey, keep it covered but don’t open fire unless I tell you!”

The triceratops kept its eyes firmly fixed on him and Stringer as it continued to drop a very large pile of steaming dung onto the floor.

“Leek’s out of the door, sir,” Stringer said. “You can start moving. There’s only you and I left now.”

Lester acknowledged his words with a curt nod, not entirely trusting his powers of speech at that particular moment. He and Stringer had been several metres further forward than Leek and the rest of the men, and the vast bulk of the triceratops was between them and the exit. But despite that, he had no inclination to join the prisoners on the rest of the wing. Quite frankly, he was more inclined to take his chance with a shitting, snorting, stamping dinosaur. The last time a bunch of rioting inmates had successfully got their hands on a prison governor the result hadn’t been pretty.

He took a step to the side, keeping his eyes on the triceratops at all times. Stringer stayed where he was, his rifle held to his shoulder in readiness, although he could in all probability have fired from the hip at that distance with equal accuracy. The dinosaur snorted and lowered its tail, leaving behind the largest pile of extremely pungent shit that Lester had ever had the misfortune to encounter. Even the elephants at Wellington zoo hadn’t managed to produce quite the same quantity on the occasion Lester had had the misfortune to take his children there for a day out. The thought crossed Lester’s mind that his once dinosaur-mad youngest son would probably envy him this experience.

The three-horned head swung to one side, as the creature followed him with its small, dark eyes. It looked like it was still weighing up its surroundings and hadn’t quite decided whether to stay or retreat back to its own time. Another four steps and Lester had reached the wall. That didn’t exactly improve his chances of survival but it did feel like something of a small milestone. Now all he had to do was keep moving slowly and steadily towards the door out of this area of the wing.

Two more steps.

His palms were sweating, his mouth felt like something small and furry had died in there and he had a desperate need to piss. None of this had been in the job description for a prison governor. His wife had warned him against this transfer, but as she’d been divorcing him at the time, he hadn’t given much weight to her opinion.

Lester took another step and received an approving nod from Stringer.

The silence that had fallen on the wing was broken by the sound of something breaking apart on one of the upper floors.

“Don’t look up, just keep moving!” Stringer ordered.

Lester took another two steps and then something came crashing down onto the netting above them, there to prevent prisoners on the upper floors jumping to their deaths from the upper galleries. The netting stretched but didn’t break, but it was enough to spook the triceratops. It lowered its head and, without warning, charged at Stringer. The soldier jumped to one side, but at the same moment, water splattered onto the floor from above and Stringer’s booted foot slid from under him, sending him crashing down onto the floor.

The sudden shock of projectiles from above broke the spell of silence that had fallen on the wing, and suddenly prisoners everywhere started whooping and throwing things again.

The triceratops caught Stringer a glancing blow from one of its horns, sending him spinning around. Without stopping to think, Lester shrugged his jacket off and held it in both hands like a bullfighter’s cape, shaking it in front of the startled animal and flapping it around. The triceratops hesitated for a moment, but then obligingly turned its attention away from Stringer, allowing the soldier to struggle to his feet, yelling loudly for his men to keep holding their fire.

Lester flapped his improvised cape and wasn’t sure whether to feel pleased or terrified when the gigantic creature turned in his direction. Doing his best to ignore the hail of missiles now being thrown from above, Lester swung his jacket backwards and forward and prepared to run for his life.

The triceratops charged. Lester jumped to one side. The three horns gouged massive chunks out of the white-washed plaster, making a noise like a gigantic fingernail being scraped down a blackboard.

Without waiting to see what it did next, Lester exchanged glances with Stringer, and received a sharp nod in the direction of the door. He didn’t need telling twice. Lester threw his jacket over the creature’s horns and prepared to run.

The triceratops shook its head but failed to dislodge the jacket. One of the horns had gone inside a sleeve and the other had pierced the fabric, essentially blinding the dinosaur. It shook its head in impotent fury and charged blindly, straight back into the anomaly.

Lester stared after it in amazement. Silence fell on the wing again and the hail of missiles from above ceased for a moment. Lester ran his fingers through his hair, smoothing it down with the sweat on his palms and, followed by Captain Stringer, who was wearing a grin that wouldn’t have been out of place on the Cheshire Cat, stalked off the wing. As an afterthought, Lester straightened his tie, just for good measure.

As the door slammed behind them, Stringer called out to the wing at large, “If you fancy attracting anything else through that thing, be my guest, start yelling again, why don’t you?”

Lester drew in a deep breath and allowed himself a very small smile. “We’ll leave D wing to its own devices for a while, shall we, Captain?”

Stringer grin widened. “You’ve got bigger bollocks than the fucking monster, sir.”

“Charming of you to say so, captain. Now shall we find out if former-Professor Cutter and Captain Ryan are doing quite so well with their respective assignments?”

With Stringer at his side, Lester walked off the wing as behind them, the anomaly glittered brightly and continued to turn slowly in the air.


	29. Chapter 29

Stephen swung his rifle up again, about to empty an entire clip into the charging gorgonopsid, but before he had a chance to squeeze the trigger, the sound of a vehicle engine screeching towards them overrode the roar from the creature.

A silver Hilux shot out of the mist and drove straight into their attacker, slamming into the gorgonopsid and knocking it off its feet. Much as Stephen hated killing any living thing, he knew that this was no time to be ruled by his principles, and besides, they’d hardly be altering the course of evolution by killing one creature from a time when something like 96% of life on earth was going to be wiped out anyway.

He changed his aim and then fired, and Ryan’s rifle discharged as one with his. The creature jerked as the bullets struck its skull, punching through leather-hard skin, thick bone and hitting home into its brain. In a heartbeat, the gorgonopsid was dead.

The door of the Hilux swung open and Captain Becker jumped lightly down onto the road, staring down at their dead attacker with a look of complete amazement on his face.

“What kept you?” Ryan demanded, dropping the spent magazine out of his M4 and slamming another one home in its place. “And don’t tell me you got stuck at a red light.”

“Already got six points on my licence, mate. Couldn’t afford to get another ticket.” Becker grinned at Ryan, not a hair out of place despite the standard of his driving, and then went back to staring at the dead creature. “Christ on a crutch, you’ve had all the bloody fun.”

“I thought you had the privilege of watching Gordie Frazer get ripped to shit?”

Becker’s grin widened. “I missed the actual event, but I saw what was left after they’d finished with him, and I have to admit that Joe Wilder and I weren’t weeping any tears over that little shit.”

“Neither is anyone else.”

Stephen felt a grim satisfaction at hearing those words. Prison gossip had already passed around lurid versions of what had happened to him at Gordie Frazer’s hands and knowing the man wasn’t able to gloat any more gave him a certain grim satisfaction.

Ryan switched his attention back to the stricken minibus. “Come on, we need to get that back on the road before any more of those fuckers decide to join the party. Hart, keep watch over the kids. We’re going to need to get them out of the bus while we shift it.”

As the mist closed in around them again, Stephen stood at the side of the road, with a bunch of terrified children clustered around him, although he had to admit that most of them seemed to be coping better than their teacher, who was still red-eyed and shaking like a leaf. He steered her away from the side of the road and got her to sit down on a granite boulder. She looked up at him gratefully but clearly was too shocked to be much use. The children seemed to have the resilience of youth, and with the ghoulishness of kids everywhere were busy staring at the bodies of the dead creatures.

“Is that a real dinosaur?” one of the boys asked, looking down at the corpse of the gorgonopsid.

“Technically, it’s not actually a dinosaur.”

“Looks like one to me,” the boy said. He aimed an experimental kick at the body. It had about as much effect as kicking a brick wall. “Used to have a book with ‘em in, but then they took it away and said it wasn’t true.”

“Looks true to me,” commented one of the other kids. “What’s it doing here?”

“Noah wouldn’t let it on the ark,” one of the girls said. “That’s why they all died out. We learnt that at Sunday school.”

“My dad says Sunday school’s a load of old bollocks.”

One of the other boys dug his friend sharply in the ribs and gave a wary glance at Stephen and the soldiers.

Stephen wanted to agree with the boy – and his dad – but in a country where doubting the literal truth of the Bible got you banged up in prison until you recanted your non-belief that didn’t seem fair on the kid. The lad was going to need to learn to keep his views to himself.

“Can we go and look at the other one?” The one who’d done the rib-digging pointed at the carcass of the Andrewsarchus.

Stephen shook his head. The body of the driver was on the other side of the huge, brindled predator and he wasn’t a pretty sight. The look one of the slightly older boys gave him told Stephen that some of the children were all too well aware of why he was keeping them so close to him. The same boy promptly provided a distraction by asking Stephen about his rifle. That, and the creative swearing coming from the soldiers as they started to tow the minibus out of the ditch, provided enough of a distraction.

The only problem they were now faced with was where to take the kids. With anomalies opening in both the prison and Princetown, it was hard to know where might be safe. Ryan ended up taking the decision that they would be better getting the kids and the people involved in the other accident off the moor to somewhere there was at least a chance of keeping them safe, so for now, the prison was the obvious place. If necessary they could be kept in the induction area until they knew what kind of spin the authorities were going to put on what had happened.

* * * * *

As they approached the prison gates, Stephen could see a pall of dark smoke further down the road, rising slowly in the air and mingling with the damp, grey mist. He wound the window of the Range Rover down and sniffed the air.

“That’s coming from a car fire,” he told Ryan.

“Looks like more than one,” Ryan agreed.

The vehicles came to a halt in the outer courtyard. Ryan left Becker and Ditzy giving orders to the kids and the other civilians and beckoned to Stephen. “Come on, I expect that’s where we’re going to find Cutter and the others. If something’s been blown up, Lyle won’t be far away.”

With Finn and Blade behind him, Ryan broke into a run. The smoke hadn’t been that far away, so there was no point in adding their vehicles to the mix. Stephen lengthened his stride and caught up with the soldiers, taking his place at Ryan’s side.

The sound of an exploding fuel tank was followed by a yell of: “I told you there was a use for Smart cars, Danny boy!”

They rounded a slight bend in the road to a sight that looked like just about every car in Princetown was on fire, but even the wreaths of foul-smelling smoke couldn’t totally hide the sight of the anomaly, shining like a jewel in a particularly noxious crown. That wasn’t the most impressive sight, though. That accolade went to the vast bulk currently lumbering in the direction of the anomaly itself.

A small knot of people were standing some way behind a burning car. Stephen presumed it was the Smart car Lyle had been referring to, but it was hard to tell now as flames were leaping in the air around it, wrestling with the smoke for dominance. Stephen could see Cutter, with Connor at his side. Standing slightly further away, recognisable by her bleached blonde hair was Abby Maitland, the animal expert from Wellington zoo. At her side was a taller woman, smartly dressed, a pair of high-heeled shoes dangling from one hand, and strands of her dark hair flying freely around her face, escaping from what looked like a once-neat coiffure,

From what Stephen could see, two cars had been positioned between the anomaly and the prison, on either side of the road, and then deliberately set on fire. More smoke was coming from behind the creature, and it looked very much like a series of car fires had been used as a means of herding the huge dinosaur in the direction it needed to go – back to its own time.

As they ran up to join the others, Cutter turned to Stephen, a huge grin on his friend’s face. “It’s working, it’s bloody working! Stephen, we’ve managed to get a diplodocus to go the way we wanted it to go!”

Stephen laughed, his eyes fixed on the creature as it took another step towards the anomaly. “Cutter, if anyone could persuade something that size to do as it’s told, it’d be you.”

Cutter laughed with him and rubbed a hand across a very sweaty forehead, smearing smoke smuts across his face and clearly not caring. “I just thought up the idea of fire and smoke. We’ve got Danny and Lyle to thanks for the fine details.”

“Best bloody fun I’ve had for years, Prof!” Lyle declared.

“Does Lester know?” Ryan asked.

“We thought we’d better wait until it’s gone before we tell him the size of the bill,” Lyle said. “But I bet we can leave it to Jenny to spin a good yarn for the insurance companies.” He shot the dark-haired woman a grin.

“I thought we were going to take it out of your wages, Lyle,” Jenny retorted, but she was smiling as well, clearly buoyed up on the same adrenaline high as the others.

It looked like they’d gone up against one of the largest creatures ever to have walked the earth and actually seemed to be winning.

“Come on, beauty,” Abby murmured, a rapt look on her face as the diplodocus stuck its head through the anomaly for a moment.

When the creature pulled its head back and looked around, Stephen knew his friend’s crazy plan had worked. Beyond the anomaly lay fresh air, on this side was billowing smoke so thick with the reek of oil and diesel that Stephen already wanted to cough his guts up and he’d only been standing there for a few moments. It wasn’t a hard choice to make, even for something that probably wasn’t very bright. He knew what he’d choose. And for a moment, it crossed Stephen’s mind to make the same choice. A world without human beings held a certain amount of appeal.

“Go on, you know you want to,” Cutter said encouragingly.

Stephen smiled at the unintended irony of his friend’s words as he spoke to the unheeding dinosaur. Stephen did want to go, but there was no way he would leave his friends behind, no matter how much appeal a world unspoiled by humans might hold. They were all in this madness together, and they’d given their word to Lester that they wouldn’t do a bunk.

“Go home,” Cutter whispered, his whole attention on the massive animal that he was trying to bend to his will.

The diplodocus did indeed want to go home. It took one last look around, then ducked its head and proceeded to make its way slowly back through the anomaly. It took several minutes for the journey back into the past to be completed, but eventually, the tip of its long tail disappeared, shooting out of sight like a bullwhip being abruptly snatched back.

Led by Danny and Lyle, the onlookers started whooping and high-fiving each other, laughing and talking loudly all at once. Connor grabbed hold of Abby’s hands and twirled her around in a circle and Stephen clapped Cutter on the back. From what Stephen had just seen, Cutter and his team had a right to be pleased with themselves.

But with the huge dinosaur safely back in its own time and, if they were lucky, the threats from the other anomalies now contained, the question of what would happen to the prisoners who had helped then loomed large.

Stephen just hoped Lester would honour the promise he’d made to Cutter. But what alternative there was to a return to a cell in a riot-torn prison, he simply didn’t know, and from the troubled look in Ryan’s grey eyes as he looked at the small knot of civilians all laughing and talking at once, Stephen had a feeling that similar thoughts were going through the captain’s mind.


	30. Chapter 30

With the acrid stink of the burning cars still sharp in his nostrils and raw in his throat, Nick Cutter held his head high as they passed beneath the prison’s iconic outer archway. He’d never in his wildest dreams imagined walking back in voluntarily once he’d managed to leave, but then again, his wildest dreams had never encompassed rips in time, and dinosaurs alive and walking the earth of a country where believing in the truth of deep time earned you a place in a prison cell with little hope of reprieve.

He’d made a promise to Lester not to abscond, but he would have had to have been a good deal more oblivious than even he was usually given credit for not to have seen the look of longing on Stephen’s face only a short time ago. His friend had watched the diplodocus marching steadily back to a time some 150 million years before the current crop of madmen had come to power and he had clearly been very tempted to follow it.

Nick had never wanted to lead Stephen and Connor into such a situation, nor had he expected them to follow his stubborn lead and refuse to espouse the beliefs of the young earth creationists. Not if the alternative was incarceration, but they’d both stood at his side and accepted the sentence, heads held high. And he knew that they were as unlikely to compromise their beliefs as he was, despite the prospect of remaining in the over-crowded hell-hole masquerading as a prison.

Evidence of the riot was everywhere. Guards and soldiers hurried in all directions, and Nick could see smoke rising from one of the brick built wings, although there was considerably less smoke in the air than there was hanging over Princetown after Danny and Lyle’s efforts.

As they went in through the doors of the induction wing, Nick saw a gaggle of children being fed chocolate bars by one of the prison cooks, while a couple of members of the medical staff dealt with what looked like some minor cuts and abrasions. Stephen had given him edited highlights of his activities on the moor with Captain Ryan and the other soldiers. Nick’s mind was already working overtime to process the information that they’d had no less than three anomalies in the vicinity at the same time.

The Andrewsarchus was from the Eocene, roughly between 45 and 36 million years ago, with the diplodocus from the Jurassic, maybe 154 – 150 million years ago, whereas the scutosaurus and the gorgonsopsid were from a much older era, the late Permian, almost a 100 million years earlier. It was almost impossible to get his head around what had happened. When Nick had been writing papers on creatures like those, he’d never imagined actually getting a chance to see them, maybe even study them, before Lester arranged for the corpses to be disposed of.

As they walked, Nick heard various soldiers giving reports to Ryan. It seemed that all of the anomalies within the prison had closed. Two had disgorged some kind of Terror Bird, phorusrachos, gastornis, or maybe even a creature unknown to the fossil record. The other had produced – if the story one wide-eyed guard had gabbled to Ryan was to be believed – a triceratops. That provided another piece of information to take into consideration. Nick needed to sit down with a computer and start making notes if he was ever to try to make sense of any of this.

The question currently burning a hole in his mind, though, was whether they stood any chance of using what had happened on the moor as evidence against the lies being peddled by those in power in Westminster. Surely they couldn’t ignore a combination of eyewitness accounts and the dead creatures on the moor?

His brain was whirling with possibilities, and Nick could tell from the amused look on Danny’s face that the former policeman knew exactly what was going through his mind. Danny had proved to be brave and resourceful, joining forces with Lieutenant Lyle to create ordered chaos, if such a thing could exist. The pair of them had hot-wired cars where they could, and broken into them and just shoved the vehicles into position when dealing with newer models. Putting together his theoretical knowledge with Abby Maitland’s practical animal handling skills, and Danny’s madcap ability to throw himself into a situation and work out the details as he went along, they’d ended up with a team that had immediately gelled under pressure, just as Stephen had done with Captain Ryan, from what he’d heard.

As they approached Lester’s office, the door was open and Nick could hear the sharp and uncompromising tone in the governor’s voice as he said, “Yes, Prime Minister, we are doing what we can to contain the situation. I am reliably informed that the largest of our little embarrassments is no longer creating mayhem in Princetown. The situation in the prison itself is also under control. There’s nothing like a murderous ostrich from several million years ago to assist in making even the most mutinous troublemaker thankful for men with large guns.”

As Lester uttered the words several million years ago, the prison governor met Nick’s eyes and gave a small smile of satisfaction, betraying for the first time where Lester stood on the draconian laws he had to help enforce. Lester listened for a few minutes, his smile fixed unwaveringly on his face, while Nick took in the fact that Lester was without his jacket and had a slightly askew tie. He began to wonder if some of the wilder reports Ryan had been receiving had any truth in them. The thought of the dapper, somewhat effete man behind the large desk taking on a charging triceratops was probably no harder to believe than anything else at this stage.

Lester’s smile broadened. “So, Prime Minister, if I understand you correctly, you are giving me carte blanche to assume control of the current situation. Personnel and funds no object?” The smile took on a distinctly wolfish edge. “And the freedom to choose my own team.”

The last few words were delivered as more of a statement than a question, and Nick’s stomach gave a slight lurch at the use of the word freedom. During the exchange, Lester kept his eyes locked on Nick’s, as if the words were being delivered as much for his benefit as for that of the duplicitous bastard in Downing Street who was determined to thrust their country back into the Dark Ages, or worse.

“Yes, Prime Minister. I do believe we understand each other perfectly. I’ll keep you apprised of developments.” Lester replaced the phone on its cradle and held Nick’s gaze for another long moment before breaking the contact and staring at each one of them in turn.

They must have looked a motley bunch, with even Jenny Lewis looking like she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. The air was expectant, almost as if a bunch of unruly schoolchildren were awaiting the headmaster’s verdict on their activities. Ryan stood in a position of parade rest, a not inconsiderable arsenal of weapons slung over his shoulders, as he’d ended up with the ones being carried by both Stephen and Danny. The captain’s face gave very little away, but Nick had noticed the looks that Ryan cast at Stephen as they’d walked along the corridor in step with each other. From what he’d seen of the soldier, Ryan was a good man who hadn’t enjoyed the role of jailer, in common with the other captains and most of their men.

“So, ladies and gentleman,” Lester said at last. “I gather that a certain creativity was used in your dealings with our various incursions. Jenny, am I right in believing that you will have a suitable story ready for the press in the not too distant future?”

Cutter could see a look of indecision on Jenny’s face and Lester obviously detected the same hesitation.

“We’ve got enough evidence to finally take that bunch of madmen down!” Nick said, breaking into their exchange as his anger and frustration came close to boiling point. “We need to be opening this up to science, not closing it all down and hiding everything away!”

“They might be mad, but they currently control considerably more of the army than I do, Cutter!” Lester snapped. “Do you really think that they won’t just lock you all away and throw away the key? Or worse, simply engineer your death. That’s not exactly hard to achieve in a place like this. If that sort of order gets given, there’ll be nothing I can do to save any of you. They’re more than capable of silencing anyone who doesn’t agree with their views. There is another option, Cutter. You heard what has just been said. I’ve been given control of the government’s response to the problem of these anomalies. Work with me on this, and maybe we can bring about change. But it won’t happen overnight.”

“So you don’t believe the lies they peddle?”

Lester rolled his eyes. “Cutter, give me some credit, please. Now, are you going to work with me on this or are you going to throw everything away for a second time? You’re no use to anyone behind bars, and you know it.” The stare he gave Nick would have caused a basilisk to shuffle awkwardly and hide its head.

Despite the now white-hot anger lodged in his stomach as solid as a piece of Dartmoor granite, Nick knew that whether he liked it or not, Lester was right. They could hardly storm Westminster brandishing a dead dinosaur for a mascot. None of them would be allowed anywhere near the press to tell their side of the story and even if Jenny did decide to throw her lot in with a bunch of heretics, they’d be discredited in no time. The government’s ability to distribute draconian DA notices backed up by the threat of a long holiday at Her Majesty’s expense would trump anything they could do to spread word of the anomalies. The internet would be no help, either. Under the guise of stamping out access to pornography, that had effectively come under state control in ways that only a few years ago had seemed impossible.

Whatever deal Lester had brokered during his conversation with the Prime Minister was likely to be the best chance any of them would get to gain some limited form of freedom. He couldn’t take responsibility for keeping his friends here any longer. He’d already seen what had happened to Stephen. The same would no doubt be in store for Connor at some point. Nick knew he had no right to ask them to live any longer with that shadow hanging over them, caged liked animals. Not if there was an alternative.

He drew in a deep breath, trying to calm the riot of his emotions. He owed it to his friends to get them out of prison. The rest was a matter for the future.

Nick exhaled slowly and gave a slight nod.

“Thank you, Professor,” Lester said quietly. “I don’t for a single moment believe that we’ve seen the last of these incursions, and I’m very much afraid that I’ll be needing the services of you all for some while to come. Cutter, I want you and your band of merry men to do everything you can to deal with this situation. Consider yourselves released on licence. Ryan will be personally responsible for your collective parole. Captain, I’ll be drafting in units from elsewhere to assist here in the prison. I’m making Wilder responsible for that side of things. You can have Becker, Stringer and Lyle to assist you, along with your pick of the men. I presume you have no objection to continuing your association with Professor Cutter and his merry band of misfits?”

Nick noted that Lester had dropped any irony associated with the use of his former title. It seemed that a brush with a triceratops had lent greater weight to a chair in evolutionary biology than had previously been the case.

“No objection at all, sir,” Ryan said. “I think today’s teams worked well.”

Lester rolled his eyes. “Yes, Ryan, I’m sure they did. I can still see the smoke from some of their activities from where I’m standing. I want the carcasses of everything left behind moved to Merrivale Quarry for the moment. Jenny, I want you to find and rent a large refrigeration facility. You never know when a dead dinosaur or two might come in handy. The past might yet prove to be the key to unlock the future.”

In the silence that followed Lester’s words, it would have been quite possible to hear a mouse fart.

It was broken a moment later by Connor, in his own inimitable style. “We get to be dinosaur hunters for real? How cool is that?”

Despite his frustration, Nick couldn’t stop the laughter that bubbled up inside him. “Aye, lad, we get to be dinosaur hunters.”

He pulled both Connor and Stephen into a hug and then clapped Danny on the back and firmly shook Captain Ryan’s hand as Abby and Jenny smiled broadly at them all.

Lester pulled a bottle of scotch out of his desk drawer. “Is this a traditional enough way to seal a bargain, Professor?” From the same drawer, Lester produced a collection of glasses and mugs that was almost as mismatched as their new team, poured a large measure of his exceedingly good malt into each one and handed them around.

Danny Quinn downed his whisky with indecent haste and held his glass out for a refill, a huge grin on his face.

Lester pushed the bottle across the desk at him. “Do help yourself, Quinn. On this occasion, I believe the Prime Minister can be personally responsible for the bill for its replacement.”

Danny’s grin got even wider. “I think I’m going to like this job.”

“Would you care to propose a toast, Cutter?” Lester asked, with the closet thing to a genuine smile on his face that Nick had yet seen.

Nick thought for a moment, then lifted his glass in salute. “To the past, the future and to freedom.”

As the same words were picked up by each and everyone in the room, Nick allowed the warmth of the whisky to drive out the knot of anger in his stomach. He’d lived without hope for so long now that it was hard to let it back into his life, but with James Lester on their side Nick started to allow himself to believe that they might just stand a chance of bringing about the return of sanity to a world gone mad.

It would be fitting for the distant past to provide the key to unlocking the future.


End file.
